Those who know me wil recognise that this has been an ongoing and offgoing work since 1996, when I was first made aware of the uncatalogued material relating to Jacquetta Hawkes.

Over years of hoping to find the funds and the space in which to do it justice, I have been grateful for the interest and enthusiasm of others - friends, and several academics in the UK and US. These include Barbara Bender, Ian Christie, John H. Jameson, John Ehrenhard, Richard Bradley, Julian Thomas, Mike Pitts, Julian Richards, Penelope Curtis, Sarah Shaw and Catherine Hills. I miss further conversations with Jacquetta's great friend, Diana Collins, and with the late Sarah Champion, Lynette Lithgow, and Jayne Snow.

I should single out a quartet of British writer friends - Jean Harker and Martin Henig who have been diligent readers, and Lizzie and Paul Edmondson, who provided the room in Italy where the first draft was written and the end was finally in sight. In Rome, I had great discussions in recent days with Janet Cavallero and Hanja Kochansky, and over in California, Woody Lewis - writers, also.

The University of Bradford provided not just a home for the archive, but one for me where I could at last get down to reading the now-orderly papers, and to writing the biography.

At the University's JB Priestley Library, I am particularly grateful to John Horton, and to Alison Cullingford and John Brooker in Special Collections, who have been so generous with their knowledge and expertise, and remain constantly encouraging. They have an excellent online resource, and likewise deserve generous funding.

http://www.brad.ac.uk/library/special/hawkes.php

My colleagues in Bradford's Department of Archaeological Sciences, notably Carl Heron, Randy Donoghue, Robin Coningham and Chrissie Freeth, found the time to talk with me about Jacquetta's unique contribution. I look forward to their comments on this online version, and to sharing the full one with them, also. Not least I am keen to see how graduate students will make use of Jacquetta on the doorstep.

I join the University of Bristol in the fall, at the kind invitation of Dan Hicks, and will continue to work on Jacquetta's legacy there, using more visual forms of engagement and working further with the idea of Jacquetta as an archaeologist of her contemporary world.

And at Stanford, I am indebted to Michael Shanks for his constant encouragement for my ideas - both the Rome diary and an online Jacquetta - and to Tim Webmoor for his help in getting Jacquetta out there, at long last. Jacquetta was not fond of computers, but I think she would make an exception in this case.

Not least, I am grateful to Nicolas Hawkes for allowing me to work, in such depth, on such an absorbing and individual character as his mother.

One final note on the sources. The majority of the material from which I quote in this online biography was previously published in books which are, for the most part, out of print. In the rare cases where I quote archive material, this will be from the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive. It appears with kind permission of the Library, and Nicolas Hawkes.

This is a work-in-progress, and I will be adding hypertext to this online version over time.

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Posted at Aug 28/2005 09:47AM:
Elizabeth Fowler (Rosalind Hawkes' elder sister): Well done. I am delighted that you have managed to get the life on line and look forward to reading the hard copy. Afraid I find reading on line quick difficult for my eyesight. I am impressed by your introduction and the preface which whet the appetite for more! Best wishes, Elizabeth