Last Friday afternoon in the Meadow Suite on campus, colleagues, former students and friends enjoyed a retirement party for Professor Richard Bradley, one of the founding fathers of our Archaeology department, and a very well respected and world renowned Prehistorian. There were speeches from Professors Roberta Gilchrist, Mike Fulford, Chris Gosden from the University of Oxford, and our Vice Chancellor Sir David Bell, followed by a jolly speech by Professor Richard Bradley himself. As well as a photography exhibition displaying amusing images from Richard’s career, to mark Richard’s love of avant-garde classical music a university string quartet played a suite by Finzi, and Richard was presented with a sculpture by one of his favourite artists, the potter, Antonia Salmon, who started her career as a circuit digger in the 1970s.

Richard has been with the department for over 40 years, starting as an Assistant Lecturer at the age of 25, but did his undergraduate degree in Law at Oxford University. Fortunately for us and for the world of Prehistory, he switched his allegiance to Archaeology, where he found that there was much more enjoyment to be had. Despite his official retirement, Richard assures us that he will not disappear from Reading, or from Archaeology, and that he’ll continue to be around for all the fun events in the department!