Distinguished Old Framlinghamians

The Brightfount Diaries, Non-Stop, Hothouse (1962), The Saliva Tree (1966), Helliconia Spring (1982), The Hand-Reared Boy (1970), A Soldier Erect (1971), Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990), The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998), When the Feast is Finished (1999), Home Life with Cats (1992), A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife’s Death (2000), Frankenstein Unbound, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, Super-State (2002), Jocasta (2005)

Archaeology in Britain (1952), Treasure in the Thames (1956), Tortoises, Terrapins & Turtles (1958), Great moments in Archaeology (1958), Excavations at Rosewell in Gloucester County, Virginia, 1957- 1959 (1962), Here Lies Virginia: An Archaeologist’s View of colonial Life and History (1963), Excavations at Tutter’s Neck in James City County, Virginia (1966), 1775; another part of the field (1966), Historical Archaeology: A Comprehensive Guide for Both Amateurs and Professionals to the Techniques and Methods of Excavating Historical Sites (1968), The Wells of Williamsburg: Colonial Time Capsules (1969), A Guide To Artifacts Of Colonial America (1969), All the best rubbish (1974 – to be reissued in 2009), American history: First look at a lost Virginia settlement (1979), The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne : An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey (1994), Shipwreck! (1995), If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household Pottery (2001), Civilized Men A James Towne Tragedy (2005), Something From the Cellar: More of This & That (2006), The Bicyclist, (written 2007, awaiting publication), Play – Smith! Being the life and death of Cap’n John (2007), Play – Dapper Dicky or Pepys in Person (2008), Wreck and Redemption (March 2009), A Passion for the Past (Autobiography – published in 2010), Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Loathe (published in 2011), Gin Legacy of the Doomed (published in December 2013), Various articles in Colonial Williamsburg archaeological series

One Fourteenth of an Elephant – A memoir of life and death on the Burma-Thailand Railway.

In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Denys Peek and his brother were just two of tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers and citizens taken prisoner.
Eight months later, he and his comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported by rail to Siam. They were to become part of the slave labour force destined for the massive construction project that would later become infamous as the Burma Thailand Railway. He would spend the next three years in over fifteen different work and ‘hospital’ camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die in a place where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths.

Narrated in the present tense and written with clarity, passion and a remarkable eye for detail, Denys Peek has vividly recreated not just the hardships and horrors of the railway and the daily struggle for survival but also the comradeship, spirit and humour of the men who worked on it. It stands as a haunting, evocative and deeply moving testimony to the suffering of those who lived and died there – a salutary reminder of man’s potential for inhumanity to his fellow man.