Unearthings: On and Off Watling Street with Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting 

Posting this to celebrate Iain Sinclair’s 80th Birthday🎉

What an inspiration Iain Sinclair was/is. Am working my way, blissfully, through his writings. He weaves a subtle magic. Love the bonkers Kötting, too. This film is so beautifully put together, John - you can almost taste the atmosphere in those madly mystical parts of South London.

Iain Sinclair is a wealth of knowledge and experience. Great partnership with Andrew Kötting

Iain is doing very well for 80, I hope you do more videos with him to get more of his knowledge and insight into history and topography.

I’ve been reading Mr Sinclair’s writings since the early nineties. He’s had a real impact on the way I see the world. Here’s wishing him a happy birthday! And thanks for this video!

This is such a fascinating and well produced piece, John. Thank you so very much for this gift!!

Happy 80th birthday Ian Sinclair!

I can't guess at how many times I've listened to and read Unearthing. Such a great story and very poignant ending. I'm going to listen to it again as I drive home tonight. Thanks once again John.

I also want to add that Iain's books have been an inspiration to me over the years (as have John's videos more recently). Thank you both for everything you do!

Nicely edited compilation of Iain Sinclair footage. Amazing how Iain speaks with such clarity on a day to day level contrasting with his prose style. Praise for the work, thoughts and imaginings of Iain Sinclair. It seems very unfair to me that Iain has to age at all. Love the comment by Andrew regarding Julian Cope, 'He was taking magic mushrooms. I can't remember what it was -- there was garlic involved.' Classic.

Only one thing..too short. As always...magical. You are so lucky to know I.S. and to walk the walks. It feels as if we are transported to a different part of the universe when I.S. talks. Thank you John for sharing this.

Happy Birthday Iain! From Canada! Thank you for another great post, John Rogers!

happy birthday, Iain, wherever you are! thanks, john, i remember watching the whole documentary - worth another viewing, i reckon!

Congrats on your 80th trip around the sun Iain ! And thank you John , cheers

I stood on that lay line for the first time in years and bemoaned and felt quite upset by the loss of the view to the north through Greenwich by the docklands obliteration

Wow, what a superb little film! I'm very familiar with those areas, having grown up there. Also, coincidentally, I've just finished reading "Watling Street" by John Higgs, which talks about Alan Moore and Steve Moore, and Iain. Thanks, John!

Wonderful. I love the way they see such atmosphere and 'feel the force' even when standing in an apparently mundane suburban street. Love it. Happy Birthday Mr Sinclair.

Brilliant. So much knowledge from so few people.Thank you

Lovely gift for a Sunday evening; thank you John and happy birthday to Mr Sinclair!

Thank you John, Iain and Andrew. Sunday feels a bit more complete now.

The words of Andrew and Iain draw you into a deeper view of place … place is unique to each viewer but somehow elucidates a depth to what doesn’t ordinarily seem to have depth … something special happens when you film these two fascinating people … most welcome as I recuperate from surgery and look out onto fading light on a damp summer’s eve. ❤

Fantastic. Unearthing is a remarkable read. Thrilling to watch this again, the place where I grew up. Many Happy Solar Returns Mr Sinclair 🎉

The etymology of Shooters Hill in south London, is the same as Shoot-up-Hill in north London. Both are steep hills where horse-drawn carriages were moving very slowly when they reached the top and were easy prey for highwaymen who would ambush them there. Great video of course John.

Fabulous John, thank you. Happy Birthday to Iain.

A wonderful experience. Thank you for making it.

Brilliant John. Happy birthday to Iain!

A great birthday celebration piece. Happy Birthday Iain!

A happy birthday to Mr Sinclair! This is very much my old Dad's stomping ground, as he was raised in Maidenstone Hill, Greenwich, although his viewpoint was probably a little less psychodelically influenced than this! Good to see this vintage film - excellent! Nice one John. 🌟👍

All childhood playgrounds. We called the woods off Shooters Hill: “Jack Woods”. The nearest wild place for Lewisham and Blackheath kids. We rarely rarely went beyond Welling unless with parents going down to Kent.

Happy Birthday Iain , Blessings xxx

There were some wonderfully excentric people in the 70s exploring the old stories and legends associated with the land and placed as part of the earth mystery movement, I'm sure you can find many an account of what they found in Treadwell's Books off Tottenham Court Road. I hope there are people still out there chasing the whispers of the land.

Good watch & listen, thanks John. Appreciated. Regards

Happy Bday Ian , great Clip John...

Happy birthday Iain from Melbourne. Thankyou for delving into the mysteries of place and space, reminding us of the magic. Thankyou for this video John.

Very interesting. Lovely to see as I lived in Ashridge Crescent and played in Eaglesfield Park as a child.

Thanks for mentioning Iain Sinclair's birthday. Love these vids in the middle of summer

very interesting, thanks to all involved

Always good to have Blow Up and Maryon Park name-checked. Thanks to all involved. X

It's Sunday, and normality has returned 🤗👍 thankyou John.

Excellent, thanks!

Just bought London Overground by Iain-an excellent book.

I hope I'm doing that well if I even reach 80! Happy Birthday Iain!

This is such a brilliant watch

Great job John that was an enlightening trip.

Nice to see Iain. I loved the film version of his 'Orbital' book, made with Chris Petit. Andrew has made some stunning work too.

Oh wow... once again, you just recorded literally outside my house!!!

Its thundering outside lobe these videos❤

Just purchased a copy of Iain's new book Agents Of Oblivion, Swan River Press here in Dublin, I didn't know Iain studied at Trinity.

Very interesting, thanks.

Love shooters hill I'm so lucky to live nearby 💖

This is all new to me but I find it really interesting, quite a few leads to follow mentioned here.

Another fascinating video, thanks 🙏. Ref., Blackheath, it's also where the Cornish (and other rebels they met on the way up country) gathered during the rebellion off 1497, some left overnight fearing the government troops they knew were coming, others left it too late. The rebels were chased back to the west country, hung/killed on the spot etc. English history doesn't tell the whole story

Fascinating!

The quote about insanity is often misattributed to Albert Einstein (as Iain does here). However, there is no evidence that Einstein ever said this. The earliest known occurrence of the quote is in a 1983 book by Rita Mae Brown called "Sudden Death." In the book, Brown attributes the quote to a fictional character named Jane Fulton. It has been attributed to a number of other people since then, including Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, and Mark Twain.

Profoundly and beautifully strange. I want Alan Moore’s Nosferatu jacket

80 I can't believe it

Excellent!

Oh dear... I've been looking at the thumbnail of your video, waiting for an opportunity to view the documentary, and only just now realize it says UnEarthings. The whole day I've been thinking it said UnEarthlings and wondering what the heck that meant! 😅

I'm fascinated by Andrew's glasses..! They're amazing! Anyone have any idea what they're about?

Happy Birthday Iain

Wow fascinating as usual 😉

I think I know London Then I watch a John Rogers video !

great stuff JR

Huzzah! It's Sunday evening so it's time for another piece of wondery from John. This is gonna be a cracker!

This is a repeat from somewhere or other. I remember the gaff in Greenwich Park when he mentioned the towers of the Old Royal Naval College were designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. I also remember the Shrewsbury Barrow and the tumuli in Greenwich Park. I've just seen in the information that it was made in 2018.

Not too sure about the content of this video and a number of its factual inaccuracies. However, it was great to see the Bronze Age, Shrewsbury Barrow, on Brinklow Crescent - where I lived from birth until going off to college in Oxford in my late teens. As kids, we knew the barrow as the tumulus and just took it for granted, shut off behind its iron railings. Other barrows on Shooters Hill were destroyed by heavy bombing in the Second World War, I was led to believe, along with many Victorian and 1930s houses in the area.

Magik John!❤

Nothing like a good hit of John Rogers

Evening 😊

We should still have Gibbeting today 👍🏻

London seems to have a powerful effect on some poeple...

💜🧡💛

Arrow-like nomadic histories/mythologies in remembering constitutive with "intersections of place" are also, paradoxically, performative psychic disavowals towards *forgetting* paradigmatic material ideological Subject-object relations in space. Circular-like nomadism collapses time's entropic horizon and past into being with a deep and deepening precedent of spooky actions, outside the outside of onto-epistemological reason.

Hi John, a respectful EVP spirit audio analysis done at 0.25x video speed, language English and Danish: 2:04 'We sacrifice to Odin', 2:06 'Because we are Asatru worshippers', 2:08 'Positive worship', 2:10 'We also worship..', 2:12 'Freya', 2:17 'Vi er danskere' ('We're Danes'). 2:20 'Ostera'. 'Ostara is the spring fertility festival that honors Eostre, goddess of the dawn. (Her name means East, from where the sun rises.) It's a time to plant the seeds for what you want to grow throughout the year. In modern pagan and Wiccan tradition, Ostara is the time when the maiden Goddess meets her reborn consort in the form of Pan'. 3:44 'Minotauros', 3:48 'And we worship the bull'. 7:43 'We sacrifice to Freya and Odin'. 8:50 'Sacrifice', 9:00 'Når Odin kommer, så er det som en sort Land Rover' ('When Odin comes it is as a black Land Rover'), 9:04 'Jeg - Odin' ('I - Odin'), 9:07 'Du Odin kender' ('You know Odin'), 9:09 'Du kender til den Asatro' ('You know about the Asatru faith'). Notice the number nine, here - a sacred number in the Asatru mythology. 9:51 'Den dybe virkelighed' ('The deep reality'), 9:52 'Og hemmelighederne' ('And the secrets'), 9:53 'Odin og Freja har respekt for de ordentlige englændere' ('Odin and Freya respect the proper Englishmen'), 9:59 'Spiritual'. 10:31 'Ofrede - vi er danskere' ('Sacrificed - we are Danes'), 10:32 'Vi ejede halvdelen af England' ('We owned the half of England'), 10:34 'Men så tog vi hjem igen' ('But then we returned home'), 10:46 'Knud' ('Canute'). 11:09 'Honor the warriors'. 13:43 'Det er kærligheden' ('It is love'), 13:55 'Culture', 13:59 'Ancestors, respect', 14:01 'Tiden' ('Time'), 14:03 'Daimon'. Reference: 'In the ancient Greek religion, daimon designates not a specific class of divine beings, but a peculiar mode of activity: it is an occult power that drives humans forward or acts against them. Since daimon is the veiled countenance of divine activity, every deity can act as daimon. Daimon or Daemon originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European daimon 'provider', 'divider', from the root da - 'to divide'. Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age acting as tutelary deities, according to entry δαίμων at Liddell & Scott'. From Wikipedia. Thank you The Völve

A very happy birthday to the wonderful Iain Sinclair, who is an advertisement for the health benefits of walking. But his claim that General Wolfe introduced freemasonry into North America is completely wrong - Benjamin Franklin published the Masonic constitutions in Philadelphia when Wolfe was still a child. And Jack Cade’s rebellion was in 1450, whereas the Peasants’ Revolt associated with Wat Tyler was in 1381. Love exploring the history of place, but try and get it right!!

As a matter of interest, does that man wear those strange spectacles for a particular reason ?

What is Andrew wearing - are they home made spectacles?

Who will carry on the legacy, once these febrile minds go the way of all flesh? Our replacements perhaps? The peasants revolt seemed particularly apropos.

@5:00 'it's got that atmosphere again. I think.' It's got that atmosphere because you were expecting it. Cognitive confirmation bias. Actually getting quite irritated by Sinclair's frequent demand that we open our blinkered eyes to his magical bullshit .... Happy Birthday, Iain.

💚✌🏾JR...🐓N15🇵🇸

Stick to facts on walks not fruitcake mumbojumbo