If you’re interested in the history of Stonehenge from a purely fictional standpoint, I point you to Bernard Cornwell’s fabulous epic, aptly titled, Stonehenge. This story is in the vein of other great English historical novelists, such as Ken Follett and Ian McEwan, or the American, James Michener.

There is much fodder for story surrounding Stonehenge as its origin is shrouded in mystery. Was it a place of worship? Probably, because the temple of Stonehenge is aligned on the rising of the midsummer sun. Druids really did worship there, and so do their modern day counterparts, but most people do not know that the ancient Druids had absolutely nothing to do with its construction (notwithstanding the opinion of a certain character in Veiled Memory). They flourished long after the monument had decayed, and who, nevertheless, would have preferred dark places for their shrines. But the midsummer sunrise is not the only alignment at Stonehenge. In his excellent book Stonehenge, Neolithic Man and the Cosmos, John North makes the case for a midwinter sunset.

Undoubtedly, the sun in summer and winter played a key role in its construction, but other celestial events were important as well, since its construction also contains what are called Moon Stones. There were four of these, of which two remain, and they were aligned on major lunar events, forming a rectangle. So, Stonehenge marks the observed extremes of the sun and the moon, but the construction is far more complicated than chronicling the activities of these celestial bodies.

Whatever one makes of it, mystery abounds, and even invites writers of contemporary sci-fi/fantasy, like me, to make something of it. Thus my trilogy, The Stonehenge Chronicles (of which the first book, Veiled Memory, was published this year and the second, The Ruby Ring, is just about complete) will bring a new purpose to the great monument, but this time with a meaning attached about which its ancient builders would have known nothing. Or would they?