Robin Bush, 67, historian on Channel 4’s Time Team archaeology series for nine years [telegraph.co.uk]

[Hoodoo]

Robin Bush

Robin Bush, who has died aged 67, was the resident historian on Channel
4’s Time Team archaeology series for nine years.

Published: 5:29PM BST 24 Jun 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/7852310/Robin-Bush.html

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Robin Bush


An Oxford History graduate, he appeared in 39 episodes of the programme
between 1994 and 2003, and presented eight episodes of Time Team Extra
in 1998.

Bush first became involved with the Time Team series through his friend
Mick Aston, Somerset’s first county field archaeologist. Aston had
discussed the idea of devising an archaeological television programme
with the actor Tony Robinson, and a pilot episode was set up.

After helping to devise the programme’s format with the producer Tim
Taylor, Bush was invited to take part in the pilot, which was shot at
Dorchester-on-Thames in October 1992. Although the pilot programme was
never screened, it persuaded Channel 4 to commission a four-programme
series of Time Team, which was filmed in 1993 and broadcast the
following year.

Bush’s most memorable experience on Time Team was taking the helm of the
reconstructed 17th-century sailing ship Dove, while filming in Maryland
when the programme visited the United States. He also sang Gregorian
plain chant in Downpatrick Cathedral and established that the Teignmouth
wreck that Time Team explored was unlikely to have been a stray from the
Spanish Armada (a revelation that obliged the local museum to adjust its
display).

Bush also appeared in Channel 4’s series Joe Public, for which he
researched the loss of a hat jewel by Henry VIII. He also featured
regularly as resident historian on Revealing Secrets, transmitted on
Channel 4 in 2001.

As a solo presenter, Bush filmed a series of six half-hour programmes
called The West at War, which examined the impact of war on the
south-west of England .

Robin James Edwin Bush was born on March 12 1943 at Hayes, Middlesex,
the son of a schoolmaster who later became a lecturer in Mathematics.
Educated at Exeter School, Robin became interested in historical
research when he was 13 while studying the school’s history; his first
two research papers were published by the Devonshire Association while
he was still a pupil there.

He won a scholarship to read History at Exeter College, Oxford, and
graduated in Modern History in 1965 . A keen amateur actor, he appeared
on stage at the Oxford Playhouse with the Monty Python actor Terry Jones.

In 1965 Bush was appointed assistant archivist at Surrey Record Office
at Kingston upon Thames and two years later moved to Somerset Record
Office, where he spent the rest of his working life. From 1970 to 1978
he was assistant editor of the Victoria History of Somerset, writing
much of the content of three of its volumes. Later he returned to the
Record Office as deputy county archivist until taking early retirement
in 1993.

Bush wrote his first book in 1977, and produced volumes on the history
of Taunton, Exmouth and Wellington, followed by a series of books about
Somerset. His researches into 17th-century emigration from the
south-west to New England led to the publication of three further books
in the United States. During one of six speaking tours of America, he
met President George Bush at the White House.

Between 1984 and 1996 he had a weekly spot on BBC Radio Bristol and then
BBC Somerset, on which he featured stories of local history and
folklore. He wrote and narrated son et lumières at Taunton Castle and
Glastonbury Abbey and toured professionally throughout the West Country
portraying the wheelchair-bound Michael Flanders — with his friend Chris
Ball as Donald Swann — in At the Doff of a Hat.

Robin Bush, who died on June 22, is survived by his second wife, Hilary
Marshall, whom he married in 1993, and by two children from his first
marriage to Iris Reed.

[Hoodoo]

Robin Bush obituary

West Country historian best known for the TV show Time Team

Tom Mayberry
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 July 2010 17.58 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/07/robin-bush-obituary

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Robin Bush was a born showman as well as an able historical researcher


The archivist and historian Robin Bush, who has died aged 67 after a
long illness, was a pioneer in making local history accessible to a wide
audience. He combined the extrovert gifts of a born showman with the
quieter skills of an outstandingly able historical researcher, and
became an essential contributor to the first nine series of Channel 4's
Time Team. Robin was the larger-than-life character, generally wearing a
bow tie and a panama hat, who would set the archaeological findings of
his friend Mick Aston in the context of the documentary evidence. This
was sometimes an infuriating process for others, as when, in a programme
filmed at Templecombe in Somerset, he proved from a 19th-century map
that they were digging in the wrong place.

Robin was born in Hayes, Middlesex. His father was a schoolteacher,
although Robin claimed that his ancestors were "wall-to-wall illiterate
farm labourers". By the age of 13 he had obtained his first reader's
ticket to the Public Record Office in London and must have cut a
remarkably youthful figure in the search rooms at Chancery Lane. Such
places were soon his natural territory and allowed him to develop what
seemed, to those who later worked with him, an almost uncanny instinct
for historical discovery.

He was educated at Exeter school in Devon and went to Exeter College,
Oxford, graduating in modern history in 1965. He could at this point
have chosen one of several paths. He was a stage actor of natural
authority and was prominent in student productions at Oxford. He was
also an operatic bass of great ability whose later performances in Boris
Godunov and Don Giovanni were memorable by any standards.

But history and its sources had captured him and in 1965 he took up his
first professional post as an archivist in Surrey. Two years later he
moved to the Somerset Record Office in Taunton, and although at first he
regarded Somerset as no more than a staging post on the road back to
Devon, he remained in the county for the rest of his life.

For eight years, from 1970, he was assistant editor of the Victoria
County History of Somerset, part of the great national project to record
England's local history from earliest times to the present day. He also
wrote and published widely in his own right, and in 1994, after three
years' research, produced Somerset: The Complete Guide, with the
photographer Julian Comrie. The title almost invited contradiction, but
the book, which runs to a quarter of a million words, remains indispensable.

Robin was appointed Somerset's deputy county archivist in 1978, and
during the next decade became one of the best-known personalities in the
west of England. He made hundreds of radio broadcasts about West Country
history and reached thousands of other people through talks and
lectures. A historical talk in some remote village hall was sure to draw
a large audience and would quite likely be rounded off, by popular
demand, with a resonant song. He also lectured abroad, undertaking six
speaking tours in the US.

After his early retirement in 1993 he was invited by Aston to become
part of a new archaeology-based television series called Time Team. He
appeared in 39 episodes between 1994 and 2003 and was the presenter of
eight episodes of Time Team Extra in 1998. Time Team gave Robin a much
wider audience for his mixture of ebullience and expertise. He
particularly enjoyed taking the tiller of a reconstructed 17th-century
sailing ship in Maryland, and in another episode sang a Gregorian chant
in Down Cathedral in Downpatrick. He returned for a special 100th
edition of the programme from King Alfred's stronghold at Athelney in
Somerset. He was in his element once more, and took the opportunity to
provide a memorably gruesome description of the supposed Viking "blood
eagle" punishment.

Robin was elected a Liberal Democrat county councillor in 1997, and from
2001 to 2005 was chairman of Somerset county council. He supported many
causes relating to the arts and culture in south-west England and
chaired the early meetings which will culminate this year in the
completion of the Somerset Heritage Centre and the Museum of Somerset.
As chairman, he also fulfilled a long-held ambition by having the
county's coat of arms augmented. To the red dragon of Wessex were now
added, among other things, three Saxon crowns commemorating the
Anglo-Saxon kings buried at Glastonbury, golden cider apples, and a
Cheddar Pink, the flower that grows uniquely on the steep sides of
Cheddar Gorge.

He is survived by his wife, Hilary Marshall, whom he married in 1993,
and by Catherine and Alexander, his children by his first marriage, to
Iris Reed.

Mick Aston writes: I first met Robin in 1974, when I moved to Somerset
to be an archaeologist in the planning department. He was a great
character, a real bon vivant. Robin was assistant editor on the Victoria
County History of Somerset at the time. I lived around the corner from
the record office in Taunton, so would often bump into him on one of his
many cigarette breaks. He smoked like a trooper. We were both interested
in the town's medieval layout and worked together on a piece for The
Archaeology of Taunton (1984), a great volume edited by Peter Leach.

When we put together Time Team, I had a shopping list of people I
thought I'd need. Robin was the only candidate for historian. He was so
over-the-top, such a good thespian, that he was great on TV. Historians
on television can be as dull as ditchwater, but not Robin. Time Team
fans have never really got over him leaving the show.

• Robin James Edwin Bush, historian, born 12 March 1943; died 22 June 2010

• This article was amended on 8 July 2010. The original referred to a
supposed Anglo-Saxon "blood eagle" punishment. This has been corrected.