The Dissolution of the Monasteries: heritage in ruins Apart from his red hair, beard, giant girth and his equally gargantuan appetite for wives, the one thing we all associate with Henry VIII is the event that the authors of 1066 and All That called, with an eye for a memorable spelling mistake, ‘the Disillusion of the Monasteries’.

Egypt's Ancient Glass Egyptian glass is among the finest of the ancient world. Yet how did the ancient Egyptians make it? New work, at the world’s earliest-excavated glass making factory in Tell el-Amarna, is unravelling the mysteries. Here Paul Nicholson delves into the archives of the late great Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, who excavated at Tell el-Amarna in the 1890s; and then takes us to his own excavations, a century later, as field director of the Egypt Exploration Society’s Amarna Glass Project. Here he tells of his excavations, how he undertook a host of fiery experiments, and why his team has shattered a raft of old interpretations.

Visiting the University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia is one of the world's greatest museums.

Preserving Britain's Glories

When Sir Neil Cossons retired as Chairman of English Heritage in June 2007, his farewell party was held in a building overlooking St Pancras Station. This was a fitting venue given the extent of Neil’s personal involvement in the transformation of William Henry Barlow’s revolutionary train shed – the world’s largest singlespan structure when it opened in 1868 – into the gleaming new UK terminus of the European high-speed train network. The other big mission of his Chairmanship – resolving the ‘national disgrace’ of the Stonehenge landscape – had defeated him just as surely as it had defeated every one of his predecessors, but rescuing St Pancras will go down as one of the great achievements of Neil’s period in office.

Visiting Jordan

Jordan is home to some of the most ancient civilisations on the planet, with archaeological evidence bearing witness to human occupation back into the Neolithic era.  The country holds treasures as diverse as the famous rose-red city at Petra to the magnificent Crusader castle at Kerak and the comparatively modern sites at Wadi Rum where Lawrence of Arabia’s fought alongside the Bedouin against the Ottoman Turks.

500,000 BC - Boxgrove

The man who died half a million years ago

In a gravel pit at Boxgrove, just outside Chichester, the remains of a man have been discovered, half a million years old. Only a shin bone and two teeth were discovered, but his position, under thick layers of gravel show that he is the oldest 'man' so far discovered in Britain.