Lisa Grainger meets Bénédicte de Montlaur, the head of the World Monuments Fund on a mission to save meaningful places.

The only universal emotion common to man and beast is fear of death. Except for rare individuals like Oscar Wilde who always wanted the last word— “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.

Early this year, on the outskirts of Beiwuzhuang village in northern China’s Hebei Province, someone started dredging a riverbed. It’s not an unusual occurrence in China, a land of fast development ...