In 1993, Richard Selley, then a professor at Imperial College London, had been thinking about the similarities between the chalk landscape of the North Downs and the Champagne region in north-east France. His neighbour had been unsuccessfully trying to farm sheep and pigs on his estate in the North Downs. Selley suggested he try sparkling wine. That vineyard now produces close to 1m bottles of wine a year, about half of it sparkling – which would, if made in north-eastern France, be called champagne.

Additionally, the poet makes use of half-rhyme. Also known as slant or partial rhyme, half-rhyme is seen through the repetition of assonance or consonance. This means that either a vowel or consonant sound is reused within one line, or multiple lines of verse. For example “briar” and “amphitheatre” in lines three and four, as well as “emptiness” and “silence” in line thirteen. The first speaker decides that they’d rather not know if anything strange happened on this land in these lines of ‘ The Chalk Pit’ . They’d rather “make a tale” and use that to fill in any blanks in their head. Or, alternatively, they add, leave it like “the end of a play”. Using this simile, he compares the chalk-pit to an empty stage, devoid of actors and props, but still alluding to action of some kind. Continuing on, the speaker makes suggestions of life that might’ve recently been there and that they didn’t see. His example is of a “ghost” that has “left…as we two came” or a “woodman with the axe”. Adapted from Notes From Deep Time: A Journey Through Our Past and Future Worlds by Helen Gordon, published by Profile and available at guardianbookshop.comHe said a dust cloud which comes up in the summer means that residents can't open their windows and their cars are covered, while the noise of large skip lorries and waste sorting machines is causing "pandemonium". When he’d finished with his laptop, Farrant pointed downhill. “If you stood here during the Anglian Glaciation you would have seen an ice sheet coming right up to the base of the chalk scarp there.”

Then we have the ending that fell flat and was utterly boring. It is just not fun when you spend a day reading a book, and it feels like you have wasted the time. The archeology aspect was what drove me to start reading this book, but not even it feels interesting anymore. Now, I'm not even sure if it's worth reading future books and as I said before it's a bit sad when a series you have enjoyed just doesn't work anymore... Once again, the key elements of this award-winning series are at hand: complex personal relationships among the protagonists that continue to evolve in surprising ways, excellent use of history and folklore, and lyrically moody imagining of landscape....a good draw for mystery buffs. Series regulars will be intrigued by unexpected developments that promise further complications for Ruth and Nelson."-- Library Journal Jesus Christ!' Nelson explodes. 'There's a bloke dead on the front steps and none of you have noticed. 'Clough turns, his mouth open. 'Aftershave Eddie? But he's asleep.'The poem takes the reader through a variety of vibrant images that paint a picture of the abandoned chalk-pit. It appears to the first speaker like an amphitheatreor stage. There is something very much alive about it even though, as the second speaker says, it has been abandoned for a century. The first can’t get the feeling out of his mind though. He insists that he’s sensing the presence of something that “just” ended, like a play or performance. Go more or less straight on through the muddy farmyard, veering to the right of a barn on the far side. Continue in the same direction across a field. On the far side go down into a wood, soon crossing a path to descend a long flight of earth steps. In a further 350m the path merges with a bridleway coming in from the left, which leads out to the A225. On 4 February, just before midnight, he slit the throats of his sleeping daughters, later confessing that he did it out of love and to send them to heaven.