Secret History: Finding Babylon’s Hanging Garden

Channel 4’s remarkable coup of digging up Richard III in ‘The King in the Car Park’ may, it seems, have given licence for any old crackpot theory to be aired. Oxford boffin Stephanie Dalley isn’t the first person to claim she has an idea of where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon might be.

After all, it’s the only one of the ancient world’s Seven Wonders to lack any archaeological evidence. The absence of breaking news probably gives away her eventual failure, but if her journey is ultimately fruitless, it’s still an engaging one – and Dalley is far from crazy.

The key revelations of this instalment of ‘Secret History’ are twofold. First, the astounding engineering abilities of civilisations predating the Romans by centuries. And second, that one of the lesser reported casualties of the Iraq invasion has been archaeological research, with many sites damaged or inaccessible because of the ongoing conflict. Way to go, Operation Iraqi Freedom.