A book of two halves. I've had it on my shelf for years, but have never got around to reading it before this. Honestly, I was put off. I visited Glastonbury some years ago and frankly it gave me the creeps; I was under the (mistaken) idea that this book was some sort of new age crystal-waffle. Don't know why, although that - and the massive prevalence of infants, their prams clogging the footpaths - was one of my main impressions of the town if not the tor, so it passed over unfairly to Ashe I think.

I was very interested to find the first half a solidly researched history of the place. Really it was quite fascinating, reading the author sift out fact from fiction in the historical record and trying to put together a social, cultural and religious timeline of the site. I'm also quite prepared to believe that there's some sort of formed maze on the tor itself; that seems a reasonable conclusion even if we don't know the details of why and what for. So far I was impressed.

Then the second half of the book, and that's where he lost me. I read the book because I was interested in the Glastonbury site itself and suddenly Ashe isn't talking about Glastonbury any more, it's all central Asian travel histories and Hopi mythology and it's just too far afield for me, the connections too tenuous. The scepticism he employed in the first half of the book, when dealing with Geoffrey of Monmouth and so on, seemed to disappear. (I, on the other hand, was at this point sceptical enough for the both of us.)

In summary: really interesting first half, unconvincing second.