Hoo Ha

For patriotic Britons who don't know what it's like to live in a society of masters and servants whose rulers would rather bury their wealth than distribute it, the project must be about the most rah-rah that can be imagined: to manufacture an exact replica of the Sutton Hoo ship and set it afloat. Obviously, so little of significance has changed since the Anglo-Saxon era that simply oodles will be discovered about what life was like, besides all the useful information to be gathered about the capacity of mediaeval vessels to sail through industrial sewage. By the same brilliant logic, a rich idiot who recreates Buckingham Palace on his Texas ranch will thereby absorb the Almanach de Gotha. As one would expect of a British project, it has naturally taken six years to notice that English oak is not quite so prevalant as it once was, and there doesn't seem to be the budget for buying in wood of the requisite stoutness, hardihood and entrepreneurial gumption. In theory it could be mined from the heads of those who think historical research means building fancy toys; but in practice, alas, there would be insufficient length and too many knots. The nearest remaining European oak forests are in France and Denmark, neither of which had anything remotely to do with Anglo-Saxon England.