Greetings, wonderful people. Great to have you with me. God bless you everyone.

Get ready to strap on the boots and walk with me along a primeval road to a place soaked in ancient history and dark emotions and light.

Hopefully it's an offer and an invitation to contemplate more of the texture of what it is to be human and alive,

topics and experiences and feelings that maybe many people feel constrained from articulating.

Anyway, I am using ghosts and hauntings in this context very much as a primer.

Start a conversation.

So, as I say, episode 16, this one is about a very famous, probably, well, it's an overused

word, but iconic chamber tombs, places of burial associated with the Neolithic in the deep south-west of England called

Wayland's Smithy. But just before we venture into this incredible landscape, let me tell you,

please, how you can help support the series. Go to patreon.com. That's what? Find me by name,

sign up, part of some cash. You become a member of the family, which grants early

access to all content, and exclusive access to a weekly question and answer session,

amongst other things. You ask the questions, I answer them, and nothing's off the table.

The details, the address, it's all down there somewhere. Okay, join me.

I think a lot of people feel that a sense of guilt maybe, and that's not the only word,

but a sense of guilt about what has happened to Britain well within the lifetime of somebody who's about my age,

which is to say 58. I have said for a while in other places and on other platforms that I think Britain has been the target of a controlled demolition.

I think what it is to be Britain and British has been dismantled down to the foundations.

And I think even the foundations are being dug out and cast aside to leave nothing but a brownfield site ready for redevelopment as something else.

You know, for the longest time there will be a patch of dry land called for cartographical purposes the British Isles.

But it's my contention that what has been to be British for a long time is gone.

And I think a lot of us are haunted by Old Britain, the Britain of our childhoods, and certainly say the Britain of our parents and grandparents and great grandparents

...