There he was – the familiar tall, lean young chap with flowing brown hair, elegantly if perilously poised on an overgrown Cornish wall, next to the megalith he had just uncovered. We, the capacity audience, all gazed appreciatively at the grey 1970s photograph on the screen. Just as nimbly the same young chap – now grey himself – sprang up on to the stage of the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms and told us what had become of that stone in the intervening years…

John Michell’s study of megaliths, their history and meaning, their scholars and desecrators, provided the central pivot for the conference’s eclectic subject matter, and his book – Megalithomania – its name.