Walter Turner died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage in November, 1946. Jacquetta was distraught. She wept openly at home in Fitzroy Road, as Nicolas, then aged nine, sat on the arm of her chair, saying softly: ‘Poor mummy’. Christopher was now living away from home as the newly elected Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford. It appears had long realised what was going on, and was so concerned at his wife’s grief that he sent her a letter of condolence. An unexpected and generous gesture from a man who must have known that, slowly but surely, he was losing his wife.

Turner was only fifty-seven. Before she heard the news, Jacquetta experienced a frightening feeling of dark and deep foreboding, telling her friend Peggy Lamert of a premonition, a `terrible feeling of anguish' shortly before his death.

Jacquetta later wrote Turner's entry for the Dictionary of National Biography, speaking of his `Knowledge of the world, even a kind of ruthlessness, which was yet in perfect harmony with the innocence of a true artist.... His poetry was as idiosyncratic as was his nature. Although by experimenting with free metrical forms and colloquial idiom he made concessions to the spirit of the times, his poetry was too rich in imagery and sound, too lyrical and sensuous and unintellectual to belong to the fashionable trends of the inter-war period.... A few lyrics mayjustly be called perfect ... and the poetic gift never left him.'

And Jacquetta poured out her sorrow in her own poetry:

I have felt sobs so deep I thought the earth must shake And bid her old rocks weep For my anguish sake.

She wrote simply inside one of her books these haunting words: "From now on I shall BE Walter".

Walter Turner’s final volume, Fossils of a Future Time?, was published posthumously. His unrestrained private life left Jacquetta with no certainty about how important she had been to him in the end. She turned for advice to another woman, Sheila Shannon, who had shared a home with Walter and his wife in London. And Jacquetta looked through Turner's poems to discern which were about her.

As Jacquetta immersed herself in poetry and extended her interests beyond the academy, Christopher was returning to it. His career had completely recovered from its earlier shaky start. His promotion at the British Museum had been hugely successful, and his regard so high, that he was elected Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford. Christopher was given a Fellowship and rooms at Keble College.

Although the possibility of the family moving to Oxford was discussed, Jacquetta remained in the leased house at Fitzroy Road when her husband took up his appointment in the autumn of 1946. Christopher was able to stay in London during vacations, but as the relationship between the couple altered - although there was no tension shown at home - Jacquetta spent more time with her own broadening circle.

After the war, Nicolas, who had largely been brought up by nannie O’Toole and his grandparents, had to renegotiate a relationship with his mother back in London. In 1951, he went to boarding school. Although he enjoyed seeing his mother, there is no doubt that she was becoming increasingly redoubtable. Left troubled, and perhaps unbalanced, after the death within 12 months of both her lover, Walter, and her beloved father, and with the marriage problem unresolved, Jacquetta threw herself into her work.

She could have pulled back on her ambition and settled for the security of being a don’s wife, living in London and occasionally coming up to Oxford, while pursuing her own research. She could also have settled for an excellent career in the civil service. But she remained restless, the more so as opportunities continued to open up for her after the war.

Jacquetta’s authoritative flourish seen in Early Britain and Prehistoric Britain, and her ease as a communicator, made her increasingly in demand as a writer. She was regularly reviewing for the Spectator, on arts and archaeology, and in 1946 added the Listener, and the Museums Journal (on 'Museums & General Education' 1st December, 46) to her varied contributor list. In March, 1947, Art & Design published her feature on 'The Mildenhall treasure'.

At the Ministry of Education, housed in Belgrave Square, Jacquetta was transferred to be Secretary of the UK National Commission for UNESCO, and her significant circle was extended yet again. She had also begun the first jottings for another book, a synthesis which she would call A Land, a homage in part to The Land, by the leading Bloomsbury Group writer, Vita Sackville-West, with whom she was acquainted.

The Ministry of Education was enlivened by its film department under Denis Foreman, later head of the British Film Institute. He was attracted to Jacquetta’s attractive Oxford graduate friend Helen de Moulipied, effectively his boss. She was lively company and buoyed Jacquetta up during her increasing bouts of despair. She would also witness a pivotal period in Jacquetta's future.

In 1947, the Spectator published 'When the root of joy is gone', Jacquetta's elegy to Turner. It does not appear in her only collection Symbols and Speculations, published in 1948. The idea of publishing her poetry came after recognising that her work was being well received. She planned to dedicate the volume to her father.

Jack Priestley, critiquing her poems (once he was smitten with the poet) was enthusiastic, telling her:`It is genuine original poetry, beaten out of life...". Jack did not write poetry, and he felt some of the lines obscure. In September 1948, Jacquetta finalised the selections and foreword to Symbols & Speculations, and it was published by Cresset Press the following year.

Jacquetta began many poems on scraps of paper, or in notebooks containing other work, or with her book jottings. She typed them, then corrected them by hand, so that the materials left in her files can be read as a fair assessment of change over time in her lyrical sense and mood. Many are archaeological in theme. The poem: ‘To a human skeleton uncovered on Mount Carmel’, has an obvious source. Some of the correspondence goes back to 1944, when she was involved with Turner and her writing was at its height. Another hand-written one begins: "How easily, too easily, could I consign my living carcase to that sea". Others remain untitled, some unpublished. (Some of Jacquetta’s poetry was read in an evening in her name "Readings and recollections of Jacquetta Hawkes", at the Society of Antiquaries in October, 1996.)

There is an austere look to 'Symbols and Speculations'. Published after Turner's death it served as an elegy to him, although dedicated to Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

‘On Staring at a Celtic Ornament’, and ‘A Glass’ are drawn from ancient and old objects:

'There on the bronze, the line Cut by the brain-held hand Grips space in its design; Seas shape, are shaped by, land…’

‘A Glass’ is 'Shaped by a hand for wine/Two centuries ago 'Why does this tapering glass/ Recall man's other face?'

Nature and landscape observed figure highly:

‘Cinebar Moth Caught by the Wind’ is about rescue and inability to rescue; the moth is a 'poor helpless pinion/Alien in this bleached, this bone-bare dominion..'.

‘Cloister’ is an intense poem, suggesting turmoil and emotional claustrophobia, perhaps reflecting her life in Fitzroy Road. 'That finger on the skies/This square shut fast below;/The layered cedars rise,/In arcs the white doves go'

Woman, the second part, includes the delightful ‘Apples’ with the words:

'Housed beneath the apple tree, Side by side my son and I Sit content to feel that we Share one green and perfect world.

And then we come to ‘Rocks are Tearless Yet’, for Turner: which begins 'I have felt sobs so deep/I thought the earth must shake

More are downbeat: ‘The Balance’ suggests 'How bitter are the years that trace/Their dismal maze as youth departs.

This through the eyes of a woman who 'Sees littered in her heart, despair's/White, leaching bones when that love dies.'

Song of Innocence and Experience, a nod to Blake, is more inventive in its geological analogy

'...Sinking slowly through the stillness Swaying downward, more and more Particles serenely silting Softly on the basalt floor.

‘Kuban’, the longest poem in the selection, and directly archaeological, has an archaeological note: 'In Southern Russia graves have been found where great chiefs lie buried together with their horses and concubines'.

She describes 'How still he lies, how straight, upon the bier', but she is not the archaeologist gazing on the body, but the concubine.

The poem, Generations, reflects on her mother’s touch: 'My arm lay about her But comfortless...

‘I Thought How I Had Known You Old’ is another for Turner:

'There from the pavement by the hospital My anger leapt at unregarding time.’

And elsewhere Mount Carmel reappears, as Jacquetta describes the local women working at the excavation site:

'Each woman bears a load High on her centred head; Through centuries has flowed The measure of their tread'.

Amid the bleakness laid bare in so much of Symbols and Speculations, Jacquetta had cause to be cheered. Her new role at the Ministry had been sorely needed to distract her from home life, and in 1947 it brought her in contact with some fascinating people. This new social whirl induced a sense that she was very much at the heart of reshaping not just Britain, but the post-war world.

Preparations were soon underway for a major event, the six-week inaugural UNESCO meeting in Mexico City. Jacquetta was Secretary of the delegation under Sir John Maud, head of the department, and much involved with proceeedings.

She glanced at the list of people picked to represent Britain and she stopped at the name of J.B. Priestley, who had been selected to represent literature, drama, and the arts. Perhaps acting out of duty to the memory of Turner, she protested that Priestley was surely not highbrow enough for this distinction, and not a worthy representative of Britain. But Sir John wisely disagreed, demonstrating the major contribution that the internationally-known and highly-regarded Priestley had made. Jacquetta had to back down. And so she begin her communication with the playwright, dictating letters which she signed simply ‘J.J. Hawkes’. Her recipient became most intrigued.

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