Sometimes the circle of life needs a little bit of fortune

THOSE ancient gods, the sun and moon, appear as circles in the sky, writes Richard Collins.

Johannes Kepler was shocked to find that the planets moved elliptically; the orbits of celestial bodies must surely be circular. To think otherwise seemed blasphemous.

Ploughs and bulldozers didn’t desecrate our ringforts, at least until recently; raths were the abodes of fairies. These round earthworks date back to Iron Age and early Christian times. The great stone circles of Brodgar Avebury and Lough Gur are at least 4,000 years old. Were these sacred enclosures inspired by the mysterious fairy circles of grasslands and forests?