Jacquetta Hawkes, archaeologist and writer

Jacquetta Hawkes (1910-1996) had an immensely rich and varied life, motivated by her passion for the distant past. She was a highly respected archaeologist, a writer of poems, plays and articles, a film-maker and broadcaster and peace campaigner. She published over 20 books, her best-known work is probably A Land (1951), which fuses archaeology, literature, geology and art to explore Britain's past and present. Other works included Prehistoric Britain (co-written with Christopher Hawkes), Early Britain, Man on Earth and Man and the sun, plus novels, plays and Fables.

Jessie Jacquetta Hopkins was born in Cambridge and educated at Perse School. Her father was Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Nobel Prize winner for his work on vitamins. She was accepted at Newnham College, Cambridge, gaining first-class honours in the new archaeological tripos. Her first husband was fellow archaeologist Christopher Hawkes, with whom she had a son. During the 1930s, she was involved in excavations at Mount Carmel, Palestine, Gergovia in France, and in Hampshire, and led a dig in County Waterford in 1939.

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