Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts (revised ed.)

I do not expect to take up the suggestion reproduced from an earlier review and quoted on the rear cover of this volume “…to crack Etruscan in your spare time”: the prospect has its attractions, but I have quite enough trouble solving crosswords. I studied Greek at school at about the time that Michael Ventris's decipherment of Linear B was being announced and recall being thrilled by John Chadwick's account of the achievement and its implications. I was then somewhat surprised to find myself in a university department whose staff claimed to be sceptical of the decipherment. Ventris, killed tragically...