Hurrah for the happy amateurs still unearthing our ancient past

Ring pull, Coke can, house keys… jackpot! All over Britain, in bogs and back gardens, from Hadrian’s Wall to Rochester Castle, amateur archaeologists are unearthing our island’s ancient Roman past. For every damp squib of a Kitkat wrapper there’s always the chance that the insistent beep-beep-beep of the metal detector will reveal the whereabouts of a lost Carausian hoard. Best of all, you get to hang on to the loot. According to the Treasure Act of 1996, it’s (mostly) finders keepers. Which would be Gollum-ish if detectorists weren’t such a sharing bunch.

Since 1997, more than 1.48 million artefacts have been voluntarily declared to the Portable Antiquities Scheme database. A new book, 50 Roman Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme collects some of the best, from a bearded bronze bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the Roman cavalry helmet found by an unnamed man – or woman – at Crosby Garrett in Cumbria. I like that “unnamed”. No fuss, no glory, just a cool

£2.3 million from the Christie’s sale.

While some detectorists may dream of finding the next Ilam Pan or Saxon stash, others are just as content with their “grots” – tiny, worn-down Roman pennies. Off they go on wet weekends wielding metal sweepers with heroic names – Excalibur, Equinox, Sea Hunter (for smugglers’ chests and briny booty) – in the Micawberish hope that something, almost certainly, will turn up. All hail the happy amateurs!

Does any other country on earth produce as many have-a-go hoard-seekers as we do? Or, for that matter, as many twitchers, trainspotters, rare books dealers and collectors of stamps, matchbox cars and crinkly Queens Park Rangers programmes from the Sixties? (My husband’s ebay habit really must be stopped.) Here, in the Treasure Act, is a rare, pleasing coincidence of eccentric national temperament and indulgent, oh-go-on-then legislation. In an age otherwise cursed by pettifogging, form-filling, licence-levying and general computer-says-no-can’t-doism, it’s cheering to think that in the unlikely event that you do stub your toe on a life-size bronze Caesar somewhere beyond the compost heap… it’s yours.

On Sunday afternoons, as the light fades and the detectorist turns to his Thermos of tea, I turn on The Listening Service. And there is lovely Tom Service giving a short introduction to Christmas songs, or backing vocals, or bagpipes, or the clacking castanets of Spain. After Tom comes Words and Music, with its mix-tape of Bowie and Baudelaire, Mozart and Larkin. It’s no surprise to me that Radio 3 is soaring like Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. In the last quarter, 2.13 million listeners a week have tuned in to Radio 3, up 16 per cent. I can’t remember exactly what did it – political tooth-pulling on the Today programme, the blouserending miserabilists of Woman’s Hour, a tea-time serial on the crisis of children in care? – but some time last year I rolled the dial from 4 to 3, where they were playing music inspired by children’s games: Debussy’s Toy Box, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Satie’s Jack in the Box. Bliss! Brexit or Brahms? Trump or Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major? Now, with honourable exceptions – The Kitchen Cabinet, A Good Read, In Our Time – it’s Radio 3 from dawn till dusk. Good for the blood pressure, good for the soul.

read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion