Leonard Cottrell


Leonard Eric Cottrell was a British author and journalist. Many of his books were popularisations of the archaeology of ancient Egypt.

Details

Leonard Cottrell was born 21 May 1913 at Tettenhall, Wolverhampton to William and Beatrice Cottrell. His father inspired an interest in history at the age of ten. At King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham, Leonard was only interested in history and English, reading widely.
In the 1930s, Cottrell toured the English countryside on his motorcycle, visiting prehistoric stone circles, burial mounds of the Bronze Age, medieval and Renaissance monuments. On those journeys, he was often accompanied by Doris Swain, whom he later married, although the marriage was dissolved in 1962. After gaining experience writing articles on historical subjects for motoring magazines, he wrote his first documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1937.
Leonard was rejected by the RAF during World War II, for medical reasons, but he joined the BBC in 1942 and they stationed him, in 1944, in the Mediterranean with the RAF as a war correspondent. In 1946 Cottrell produced a dramatised documentary on the experiences of Harold Osmond Le Druillenec, a Jersey schoolmaster who was the only British survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Cottrell's experiences as a war correspondent formed the basis of his book All Men are Neighbours. He worked at the BBC until 1960, when he resigned and moved to a house overlooking the estuary of the River Kent in Westmoreland, Cumbria, where he stayed for the rest of his life, writing.
Among other achievements, Cottrell was the editor of the Concise Encyclopaedia of Archaeology.
He was married and divorced twice, first to Doris Swain and Diana Bonakis. He had no children by either marriage.
Leonard Cottrell died on 6 October 1974.

Books

All Men are Neighbours The Lost Pharaohs: The Romance of Egyptian Archaeology Madame Tussaud The Bull of Minos - the discoveries of Schliemann and EvansOne Man's Journey Life Under The Pharaohs The Mountains of Pharaoh: 2,000 Years of Pyramid Exploration Seeing Roman Britain Lost Cities The Anvil of Civilisation The Great Invasion Wonders of the World Wonders of Antiquity The Concise Encyclopedia of Archaeology Land of the Pharaohs Enemy of Rome