Treasure trove

“The weather worried them more than the war. If war was going to come, it was going to come, but the weather could damage the site while they were digging it.” That’s Professor Martin Carver’s take on a key concern of the Sutton Hoo excavation team as they rushed to unearth and record the fabulous – and now globally famous – seventh-century ship burial in rural Suffolk, during the summer before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Carver is a leading expert on Sutton Hoo, and he directed excavations there for a decade from 1983.

However, it’s that 1939 dig that is going to come into sharp focus again, as it’s the subject of new Netflix film The Dig (itself based on a book by the same name, written by John Preston). It’s a story that demands to be told. Not only does it involve the discovery of astonishing treasures that reshaped our understanding of the period, set to the backdrop of looming global catastrophe, but it also has a cast of characters who are entirely fascinating in their own rights.

First, we need to meet Edith Pretty. In 1926 she and her husband, Colonel Frank Pretty, purchased Sutton Hoo House and its estate of sandy heath and woodland. Colonel Pretty died in 1934, survived by Edith and their young son, Robert. The widowed Mrs Pretty