“Mending our veterans’ lives”: Hampshire archaeologist donating proceeds from his latest book to SSAFA

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20 September 2024

Richard Osgood MBE, a longtime archaeologist and author who lives in Winchester, is donating the proceeds from his most recent book Broken Pots, Mending Lives to SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity.

Born in Kingston upon Thames and raised in Wiltshire, Richard comes from a family of servicemembers. His father was a cavalry veteran in WWII, and both of his grandfathers served in artillery in WWI, one in the British Army and one in the Australian Army.

After graduating with a Master of Letters from Oxford in 2003, Richard joined the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as one of two archaeologists inside their Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO). He has authored a handful of books about archaeology and its connections to military history, including Bronze Age Warfare in 2000 and The Unknown Warrior: An Archaeology of the Common Soldier in 2005.

His latest book – Broken Pots, Mending Lives – is about one of the MoD’s programmes designed to aid in the recovery of servicemembers: Operation Nightingale. Since 2011 the programme has taken veterans out to dig sites alongside archaeologists like Richard, to get hands-on experience with the history that lays beneath our feet.

On his latest book and choosing SSAFA, Richard said: “Operation Nightingale – the subject of the ‘Broken Pots’ volume – has been running for well over a decade. It thus seemed high time to note down some of these memories, achievements of participants, and help them tell their stories. I wanted to get a good mix of the archaeology and the military tales within it, focusing on the people throughout.

“SSAFA was the obvious choice to donate any funds to, as their work is aimed across the services of the Armed Forces and has been going on for a very long time.”