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The Flying Dutchman reaches port

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Vincent Megaw
Vincent Megaw*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia (Email: [email protected]); Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, UK
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Abstract

Christopher Hawkes, foundation Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford, was once asked whether he knew a young archaeologist called Vincent Megaw. He responded: “Megaw? Megaw? There’s a whole tribe of Megaws!” This was a slight exaggeration. I was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1934 to a Dutch Jewish mother, Th´erèse, a talented pianist and mezzo-soprano whose parents were taken to Auschwitz in 1942 and an Ulster Protestant father, Eric, a pioneer of ultra short-wave propagation who died at the age of 48 (Figure 1). One uncle, A.H.S. (Peter) Megaw was a distinguished Byzantinist and great singer of contemporary Greek songs. He was the last Director of Antiquities of the former Colony of Cyprus and then Director of the British School at Athens. His younger brother, Basil, read Archaeology at Peterhouse where he met (and subsequently married) Eleanor Hardy—family mythology has it that they got engaged while studying Early Bronze Age decorated axes (Megaw & Hardy 1938).

Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 546 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

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