"I didn't quite see how anybody was going to take it on, but since no one knew anything about it anyhow, it seemed to me that you might as well have a bash so bash we had." (C.W. Phillips - July 1939)
As Hitler's armies prepared to roll across Europe in the summer of 1939, three local men from Suffolk made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the British Isles - the discovery of a spectacular hoard of royal regalia buried in the midst of the ghost outline of a great wooden ship. The Sutton Hoo treasure is now one of the show pieces of the British Museum and has been the subject of 20 years of analysis and research. Tonight's film The Million-Pound Grave was first shown in August 1965 and brought Sutton Hoo to an immense audience. It is the unchanging and fascinating story of that incredible discovery as told by the excavators themselves - a timeless story which loses nothing in its retelling. Introduced by Sir David Wilson, Dr Rupert Bruce Mitford
Original 1965 narrator Nicholas Thomas
Original 1965 production: PAUL JOHNSTONE
Revised version:
Film editor ROGER GUERTIN
Film cameramen COLIN WALDECK PETER HALL, JOHN ELSE
Executive producer BRUCE NORMAN
Producer RAY SUTCLIFFE
(Another programme Thursday 8.10)
FEATURE: page 74