After the death of John Michell I was ashamed to realise that I had missed out on much of his work; he was brought to my attention by a friend who is also a very talented writer and musician - and who just happens to live in Yatesbury (no, definitely not JCope). He descibes these 'phenomena' as land art.

In the endeavour to get to know the work of John Michell better, I recently bought a second-hand copy of the book JM wrote with Robert J.M. Rickard called Phenomena - I haven't really had time to dip into it yet but am looking forward to reading the chapter on Arkeology, among others. Perhaps the land art/cropcircles continue as a tribute to this man who is considered a visionary by the wide 'circle' of people who revered him. Cynicism is the way of the 21st century; crop circles belong really to the 20th century in the same way that 'spontaneous human combustion' and 'showers of frogs and fishes' do.

I'm going to suspend cynicism on this subject but to be honest would rather stand at West Kennet Long Barrow and look at a field of ripening barley, peppered with poppies, without the land-art.