Gathering the Fragments

This selection of work by Professor Charles Thomas, Cornwall’s leading historian, focuses on the more elusive titles from his long and illustrious career and covers the whole range of his output from folklore and archaeology to military and local history, and from cerealogy to cryptozoology. The book also includes unpublished material, as well as specially composed introductions to each chapter, a full biography and a select bibliography.

Chapters featured include: A Plea for Neutrality (New Cornwall, 1955); Youthful Ventures Into the Realm of Folk Studies - Present-day Charmers in Cornwall (Folk-Lore, 1953), Underground Tunnels at Island Mahee, County Down (Ulster Folklife, 1957), Archaeology and Folk-life Studies (Gwerin, 1960); What Did They Do When it Rained in 1857? (The Scillonian, 1986); Home Thoughts from Abroad (Camborne Wesley Journal, 1948); The Day That Never Came (The Cornish Review, 1968); Camborne Festival Magazine - The Camborne Printing and Stationery Company (1971), The Camborne Students’ Association (1974), Camborne’s War Record, 1914-1919 (1976), The Camborne Volunteer Training Corps in World War One (1983), Carwynnen Quoit (1985); Jottings from Gwithian (The Godrevy Light) - How Far Back Can We Go? (2006), Ladies of Gwithian (2007); Two Funeral Orations (unpublished) - Charles Woolf (1984), Rudolf Glossop (1993); Archaeology and the Mind (unpublished) (1968 inaugural lecture, University of Leicester); The Archaeologist in Fiction (1976); Archaeology, and the Concept of Cornishness (unpublished) (1995 memorial lecture, Cornwall Archaeological Society); A Couple of Reviews - Lost Innocence: Archaeologists as People (Encounter, 1981), The Cairo Trilogy (Literary Review, 2001); An Impromptu Ode - To A.L. Rowse (1997); The Cerealogist - An Archaeologist’s View (1991), Magnetic Anomalies (1991/92); Two Cryptozoological Papers - The “Monster” Episode in Adomnan’s Life of St. Columba (Cryptozoology, 1988), A Black Cat Among the Pictish Beasts? (Pictish Arts Society Journal, 1994).

Professor Charles Thomas CBE DL DLitt FBA FSA is a former President of the Council for British Archaeology, the Society for Medieval Archaeology, the Royal Institution of Cornwall, the Cornwall Archaeological Society and the Cornish Methodist Historical Society. He is currently the President of The John Harris Society.