[quote="Sanctuary"]

" I sent the clip onto a pal. He was grateful and replied... "

Maybe you could pass on some responses .

'John actually was a visionary, who did so, so much original research,
he more or less founded the "New Age" with his " View over Atlantis", "

True , but like most "new age stuff it's fantasy .

" but his "Old Stones at Lands End" was groundbreaking and authentic.
Nobody had done anything like that before. "

Never hear of Borlase , Lukis ,Pool , Blight etc and the splendid Vivien Russel ?

"Genuine, shoeleather research...he found all those stones."
His description of the area as "a few square miles " is fitting .
What he covered was a fraction of what Ms Russel did .
he didn't find "all these stones , see the others for the majority of them .

"Came down to Penwith, and found them, and made sense out of them."

Created a fantasy around them ,see the Bob Forrest link for the problems .
"Show me an Archaeologist that would have done that,"
As for shoeleather ,see above ,as for fantasy ,there's a few of them too .

"Of course, he is the inspiration behind "Megalithomania". "

He had a sense of humour and the laughs continue there .

"He was a brilliant mathematician."
No, he wasn't .

Personally I like John Michell's books, they're very engaging. I also like Alfred Watkins for the same reason. It doesn't mean I'm going to accept a lot that either of them said, but then I don't necessarily agree with Burl about glaciers either :)

I do think it's a bit of a stretch for your friend to say JM "found" all the Land's End stones in "Old Stones of..." though; William Borlase, William Copeland Borlase, JT Blight (a visionary in every sense) and Viv Russell had already recorded pretty much everything on the peninsula in a lot more detail. But still well worth reading, especially as his books opened up the places to wider, non-archaeo audience in much the same way Cope's TMA did two decades later. And that can't be a bad legacy.