About Rupert Soskin & Michael Bott
TAC Festival 2026 Keynote Address:
"Being There: How Filming Can Change Perceptions"
Michal Bott
Michael Bott has spent most of his professional life involved in performance and media production in the theater, and on both sides of the camera lens. An accomplished actor, he has been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in England and has worked extensively in TV and Film. Born on the Isle of Man, he developed a lifelong interest in megaliths and prehistory that was sparked by a visit at the age of 8 to the Rollright Stones, the enchanting Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic complex in Oxfordshire.
Rupert Soskin is a naturalist, photographer, and author of the books Standing with Stones: A Photographic Journey through Megalithic Britain and Ireland and Metamorphosis: Astonishing Insect Transformations. Rupert’s fascination with megalithic sites started during solo backpacking journeys in the 1980s, particularly the remote, ancient sites on Dartmoor in Devon. He began including megalithic sites in his guided nature walks, which progressed into tours of sites in the UK and abroad.
Rupert Soskin
Friends and colleagues in the UK since the late 1990s, Michael’s and Rupert’s shared fascination and combined talents eventually culminated in the film Standing With Stones, which was greeted with acclaim at TAC Festival 2010. In 2018, they began a podcast, which has since developed into The Prehistory Guys, a YouTube channel focused on prehistoric archaeology with over 100,000 subscribers. Together, collaborating with ALI, they have also guided popular TAC Tours of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, with a much-anticipated “Tour of Scotland & the Isles” coming in September of 2026.