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16 Nov, 4 tweets, 3 min read
Letter from Simon Jenkins, a former chairman of ⁦@nationaltrust⁩, to The Times, opposing the #StonehengeTunnel. Image
“The decision is being taken not by an environment or heritage minister but by a transport secretary to ease traffic, against the advice of the planning inspectorate.”

#StonehengeTunnel
The tragedy is that @nationaltrust under its current leadership - as this from Devizes MP @danny__kruger makes clear - have played a key role in providing the Government with the fig leaf they needed to proceed with the #StonehengeTunnel in the face of @PINSgov’s opposition. Image
That @nationaltrust will have a prime opportunity - should the #StonehengeTunnel go ahead - to monetise the land they own around Stonehenge is, I am sure, just coincidence...

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More from @holland_tom

Tom Holland Profile picture
19 Nov
The cavalry to the rescue: 17 of the most formidable scholars you could wish to see as signatories to a letter to The Times opposing the #StonehengeTunnel have saddled up & come galloping over the horizon.

They are not happy. Image
"An area within the WHS the size of 20 football pitches will be destroyed because the tunnel is simply too short... Half a million artefacts are destined for oblivion: they will be destroyed without trace by mechanical excavators... This destructive strategy is unacceptable."
"Grant Shapps, transport secretary, overruled a recommendation from planning officials to allow the scheme to proceed."

He's also overruled UNESCO & the leading academic experts.

Still, at least he's got the chief executive of Highways England onboard... thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/s…
Read 5 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
18 Nov
Watching the Storyville on the Notre Dame fire. An amazing film, upsetting & gripping at the same time: they seem to have interviewed everyone Image
I have also learned that the French for ‘fake news’ is ‘fake news’
“A kind of yellow smoke...” Image
Read 7 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
12 Nov
"The Planning Inspectorate had recommended Transport Secretary Grant Shapps withhold consent, warning it would cause "permanent, irreversible harm" to the World Heritage site."

So what has the Government done?

Go on - guess.
#StonehengeTunnel
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
".. the effects of the proposed development would substantially and permanently harm the integrity of the WHS, now and in the future."

This is a very blunt judgement from the Planning Inspectorate.

SUSTANTIAL & PERMANENT HARM to our most significant prehistoric landscape.
Why has the Government over-ruled such clear advice?

I'd be very interested to follow the money...
#StonehengeTunnel
Read 5 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
12 Nov
Why did the Planning Inspectorate recommend tthe Government should turn down the #StonehengeTunnel?

Because it threatens "substantial harm" to the Stonehenge landscape, which is - as the Planning Inspectorate reminds the Government - a World Heritage Site
Grantt Schapps' response? “He accepts there will be harm as a result of the Development in relation to cultural heritage & the historic environment & that this should carry great weight… This harm along with the other harms identified, are outweighed by the benefits.”
The benefits to who?

- Tory MPs in the s-west
- the haulage industry
- developers, who will make fat profit from bulldozing our most precious prehistoric landscape
- English Heritage & the Natural Trust, who will be able to charge people for a view that will no longer be free
Read 6 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
12 Nov
Who are the people most chronologically removed from us to have statues in London? Boudicca, Trajan - then who? Richard I?
Aha - excellent! Alfred the Great!
(Gods & Homeric heroes don’t count)
Read 14 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
10 Nov
And so I curl up with @James1940’s new book, #Sicily43.

Looking forward to it hugely, as I ever do my brother’s books...
General Alexander, I learn from @James1940, was the only Allied commander in the 2nd World War to have led German troops in battle. (In 1919, against the Soviets in Latvia.) #Sicily43
Alexander had also commanded men in battle at every single officer rank, spoke German, French, Italian, Russian & Urdu fluently, & was the last British soldier to be evacuated from Dunkirk. Classy.
Read 6 tweets

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