Extollagy!

There is something shamanic about what we do: this total-pyschic fall and drive into the past, this urge to connect with beings who are gone. It’s dressed up in words and citations, it wears a mask of science, but something primal lurks among the book stacks.

Merlin chases an eight-legged pig through the classmarks. Handlebar-moustachioed British archaeologists wreck the Great Stupa of Sanchi. Alexander and his griffins land on the Kaba, catch their cycling shorts on the crockets of St Mary Redcliffe.