The Dig is a dramatisation of the events leading to Britain's most famous archaeological find: A royal grave dating back to the time of Saxon kings at Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge in Suffolk.

Preston might have fallen into the trap of writing this in the style of some Indiana Jones Adventure, but fortunately for us he resisted this temptation.

In concentrating on the contextualisation of this fascinating story Preston's intensely human book constantly reminds us that rediscovering the past is a deeply equivocal pursuit.

The Dig starts, and ends, in mud. The book begins when Sutton Hoo landowner Edith Pretty hires Basil Brown, a self-taught local archaeologist, to excavate the burial mounds on the field by her house. Her husband, who had died suddenly in 1934, always felt there was something inside them: now, as the world war approaches, she wants to know if he was right. Brown slowly digs over the field, finding nothing. He almost gives up. Then, in a moment of revelation, he makes a discovery that will change his life -for better or worse.

I have walked the site for many years. A lonely place the mist would swirl in the early morning sun and it did not take a great deal of imagination to transport oneself back to the dig of 1939 or even to that time when hundreds of men laboured up the steep hill from the river dragging the ship containing their great king.

Today the site is full of signage and fencing and the mystery is diminished. How much worse it must have been for Brown who having uncovered the first signs of the ship-burial finds the site over-run by academics from rival museums battling to lay claim to the treasure.

The fate of the ship and its lustrous contents is reduced to a choice between different varieties of display cabinets. Few gains are ever wholly positive.

The Dig shows a delicate awareness of modernity's ambivalent legacy. Preston's feeling is for the soil and its scions, not the bright, shiny figures of the modern age. Ignoring the self-proclaimed heroes of the excavation, he takes characters who are, themselves, submerged.

A really good read.