Book of the Month November 2023
The Modern Antiquarian 25th Anniversary
Can it really be 25 years since The Modern Antiquarin changed everything?
It appears to be so.
The Modern Antiquarian began for me before the book was published, through a set of postcards that would arrive featuting ancient sites around the UK. Often they would carry news of a new Julian Cope single, album or tour but increasingly they would talk about trips to stones, fieldwork and promising megalithic discoveries. After what felt like a monumental wait the book finally arrived fully formed and really for the wettest weather with it’s wipe clean cover and slipcase and stacked with ancient sites I couldn’t wait to get out and experience for myself. Not only were there comprehensive theories and thoughrally researched uses and meanings attributed to the sites within, there was also a rainbow themed gazateer to visit them all. Fieldnotes, O.S. Map co-ordinates, poems, photos throughout, antiquarian drawings, it was all there in spadess. From that point on The Modern Antiquarian was always either on the table to be refered to, in the boot of the car travelling with me, or in a backpack on a way to whichever site I was visiting that day. A weighty book but one worth carrying always.. By 2004 I was regularily contributing fieldnotes, photos, blogs and even a few newly discovered sites to The Modern Antiquarian website. A place filled with fellow enthusiasts, fans and obsessives.
Now we are have the fortune of The Modern Antiquarian 25th Anniversary Cope’s Notes. This is a beauty of a publication with photos from the trips that made up the original site visits, refections on how The Modern Antiquarian came to be written and publisehd. It is way more that that too as you might expect from Julian Cope. There is a CD of 12 new songs, photos of pages from the original handwritten journals that became the book, stories of tours of the Outer Hebrides, insights into Julian’s main influences and so much more. It’s an essential companion to the original book but also being a forever foreward thinking mind at work Julian makes all of this relevant now, I mean of course, just look at what he started. The aim was to get people out of the house ane visiting these sites for themselves, well Julian, mission accomplished!
