This upbringing made Edith curious and passionate about history and also gave her confidence to follow her dreams. Her father even excavated a Cistercian abbey adjoining their home at Vale Royal. Edith’s family traveled all over the globe, met royalty and leaders of countries, even participated on historic archeological digs in Egypt and Pompeii. Her grandfather was poor but worked his way up to being a factory owner his son was an incredibly successful industrialist. Who was Edith Pretty?Įdith May Dempster was born on Augto society and wealth. See, Edith Pretty was a badass, and you’d never know it from this movie. And that’s because it’s based on this book and not based on the real, and in my opinion, far more fascinating life of Edith Pretty, the owner of the property where the Sutton Hoo excavation took place. While The Dig is a good movie, it missed the opportunity to be a great movie.

But this book has a lot of inaccuracies and due to it being written by the nephew of Peggy Piggott (one of the excavators), his book focuses a lot on this individual. Nothing wrong with that, some of the best novels are historical fiction. While this novel is based upon a true story and includes real people, Preston took creative liberties to craft an engaging dramatic book about this event. Preston was inspired by finding out after her death, that his Aunt Peggy participated in the excavation and found the first piece of treasure at the site. Preston’s book is a piece of historical fiction about the Sutton Hoo excavation. The Dig is based on a 2007 book of the same name by John Preston. Tell me About The Dig on Netflix Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty in the movie, The Dig The Dig did NOT share the story either of us was expecting.

He watched some documentaries and did additional research and had been sharing what he learned with me for weeks. We chose this movie because my husband recently learned about the true story behind this movie. This weekend, my husband and I watched The Dig, a new movie on Netflix that stars Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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