My big news is the re-publication of Hand of Fire with a gorgeous new cover. Most of you, my weekly post readers, have read it, and it’s the same book, but if you’ve been wanting a copy, here it is. Right now it’s only available on Amazon as an ebook. It’s also listed in Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it at no cost if you are enrolled there. The paperback will be available in a couple weeks. Here’s the new cover. The old edition is still the dominant one on Amazon, despite being out of print. That will change as the paperback goes live and more copies of the new edition sell, but click through directly from here to find it easily.
The post I found fun this week had me daydreaming about which museum basement or storeroom I would most want to sneak into:
What’s hiding in the basement of the British Museum? Large scale Greek and Roman sculpture and a large Assyrian collection, including the Banquet Scene (645-635BC), the world’s finest single Assyrian relief sculpture, of the kind destroyed by Islamic State in Iraq. Occasionally these treasures get seen in shows around the world that the British Museum lends them for, but mostly they hang out on wooden pallets placed “safely” on the floor. They closed this part of the museum in the 1960’s for various reasons to do with access and costs. A new masterplan for a sweeping redisplay of the British Museum collections—which will take decades to implement—won’t include the basement. They might put some of the Assyrian pieces up on the main floor, however. You can make an appointment to see the sculptures. All this makes me want to sneak into the basement and look at these banished treasures. I think this might be a bit like the deep appeal books gain from being banned. Which museum’s basement or closed storerooms do you secretly daydream of exploring? Click here for Archaeology News Network “British Museum’s basement of treasures to remain off-limits”