Guy de la Bédoyère
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Guy Huchet de la Bédoyère is a British historian, who has published widely on Roman Britain and other subjects, and has appeared regularly on the Channel 4 archaeological television series, Time Team. He has also taken part in a number of other television programmes including a live archaeology programme from Egypt and a series on genealogy which he copresented with Bill Oddie.
Despite his French surname, his father's ancestry is mostly English, Anglo-Irish and Scottish, with a large part belonging to the ancient Lincolnshire family of Thorold baronets as well as the dukes of Manchester and the earls of Salisbury. His great-great-grandfather was Anthony Wilson Thorold, Lord Bishop of Winchester. One of his male-line ancestors was the cousin of Charles de la Bédoyère, Napoleon's aide-de-camp at Waterloo in 1815. His grandfather, Michael de la Bédoyère, was the editor of the Catholic Herald for approximately 30 years. He is a second cousin of Richard Gough, the former captain of Glasgow Rangers and Scotland.
De la Bédoyère took an archaeology and history degree at Durham University, a modern history degree at the University of London, and an MA in Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, now part of University College London. His special interests include coinage (ancient and modern). He is a Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He discovered the use of Virgil's poetry in the legends on coins of a rebel Romano-British emperor called Carausius (286-293).
He has published books on a diverse range of subjects. These include:
- a number of publications on Roman history for English Heritage;
- a book on the archaeology of aviation of the Second World War (for which he took a private pilot's licence at Biggin Hill);
- an edition of the correspondence between the diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn;
- an edition of Samuel Pepys's other letters;
- The History of Computers,
- The First Polio Vaccine, and
- The Discovery of Penicillin in a series of educational science history books; and
- as of 2006 he is working on The Romans For Dummies in the popular For Dummies series.
He is an occasional correspondent to Current Archaeology magazine, and also writes regularly for genealogy magazines such as Practica Family History.
[edit] Selected works
- Particular Friends. The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Boydell (2nd edition 2005). ISBN 1843831341.
- The Diary of John Evelyn, Boydell, Woodbridge, 1995. ISBN 0851156398
- The Letters of Samuel Pepys, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2006. ISBN 184383197X.
- The Finds of Roman Britain, Batsford, London 1988. ISBN 0713460822.
- The Buildings of Roman Britain, Batsford, London 1991, now reprinted by Tempus, Stroud, 2001 as a revised second edition. ISBN 0752419064.
- A Companion to Roman Britain, Tempus, Stroud, 1999. ISBN 0752414577.
- Eagles over Britannia. The Roman Army in Britain, Tempus, Stroud, 2001. ISBN 0752419234.
- Roman Towns in Britain, Tempus, 2003. ISBN 0752429191.
- Architecture in Roman Britain, Shire Archaeology no. 66, 2002. ISBN 0747803536.
