Jacquetta Hawkes

Who was Jacquetta Hawkes?

Jacquetta Hawkes was a British archaeologist and writer.

Born Jessie Jacquetta Hopkins, the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, she married first Christopher Hawkes, then an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, in 1933. From 1953, she was married to J. B. Priestley. She is perhaps best known generally for her book A Land. She was a prolific writer on subjects quite removed from her principal field. She was above all interested in discovering the lives of the peoples revealed by scientific excavations. With her first husband, Christopher Hawkes, she co-authored Prehistoric Britain and with J. B. Priestley she wrote Dragon's Mouth and Journey Down a Rainbow. Her other works include The World of the Past, "Prehistory" prepared under the auspices of UNESCO, The Atlas of Early Man and The Shell Guide to British Archaeology.