A biographical history of the Romans who conquered and dominated Britain, based on the latest archaeological evidence and original source material. Here are the stories of the people who built and ruled Roman Britain, from the eagle-bearer who leaped off Caesar’s ship into the waves at Walmer in 55BC to the last cavalry units to withdraw from the island under their dragon standards in the early fifth century AD. Through the lives of its generals and governors, this book explores the narrative of Britannia as an integral and often troublesome part of Rome’s empire, a hard-won province whose mineral wealth and agricultural prosperity made it crucial to the stability of the West. But Britannia did not exist in a vacuum, and the authors set it in an international context to give a vivid account of the pressures and events that had a profound impact on its people and its history. The authors discuss the lives and actions of the Roman occupiers against the backdrop of an evolving landscape, where Iron Age shrines were replaced by marble temples and industrial-scale factories and granaries sprang up across the countryside.

'A triumph' INDEPENDENT 'A thought-provoking and indispensable book' DAILY MAIL 'An instant classic ... I have been reading it with unalloyed admiration and delight' EVENING STANDARD Roy Strong has written an exemplary introduction to the history of Britain, as first designated by the Romans. It is a brilliant and balanced account of successive ages bound together by a compelling narrative which answers the questions: 'Where do we come from?' and 'Where are we going?' Beginning with the earliest recorded Celtic times, and ending with the present day of Brexit Britain, it is a remarkable achievement. With his passion, enthusiasm and wide-ranging knowledge, he is the ideal narrator. His book should be read by anyone, anywhere, who cares about Britain's national past, national identity and national prospects.

A sequel to Nicholas Orme's widely praised study, Medieval Children Children have gone to school in England since Roman times. By the end of the middle ages there were hundreds of schools, supporting a highly literate society. This book traces their history from the Romans to the Renaissance, showing how they developed, what they taught, how they were run, and who attended them. Every kind of school is covered, from reading schools in churches and town grammar schools to schools in monasteries and nunneries, business schools, and theological schools. The author also shows how they fitted into a constantly changing world, ending with the impacts of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Medieval schools anticipated nearly all the ideas, practices, and institutions of schooling today. Their remarkable successes in linguistic and literary work, organizational development, teaching large numbers of people shaped the societies that they served. Only by understanding what schools achieved can we fathom the nature of the middle ages.

The author and classics scholar shares “a delightful, deeply informed recounting of her journeys across Britain in search of its ancient Roman past” (Kirkus, starred review). What does Roman Britain mean to us now? How were its physical remains rediscovered and made sense of? How has it been reimagined, in story and song and verse? Sometimes on foot, sometimes in a magnificent, if not entirely reliable, VW camper van, Charlotte Higgins sets out to explore the ancient monuments of Roman Britain. She explores the land that was once Rome’s northernmost territory and how it has changed since the years after the empire fell. Under Another Sky invites readers to see the British landscape, and British history, in an entirely fresh way: as indelibly marked by how the Romans first imagined and wrote, these strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world, into existence. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize

A compelling new account of religion in Roman Britain, weaving together the latest archaeological research and a new analysis of ancient literature to illuminate parallels between past and present Two thousand years ago, the Romans sought to absorb into their empire what they regarded as a remote, almost mythical island on the very edge of the known world—Britain. The expeditions of Julius Caesar and the Claudian invasion of 43 CE, up to the traditional end of Roman Britain in the fifth century CE, brought fundamental and lasting changes to the island. Not least among these was a pantheon of new classical deities and religious systems, along with a clutch of exotic eastern cults, including Christianity. But what homegrown deities, cults, and cosmologies did the Romans encounter in Britain, and how did the British react to the changes? Under Roman rule, the old gods and their adherents were challenged, adopted, adapted, absorbed, and reconfigured. Miranda Aldhouse- Green balances literary, archaeological, and iconographic evidence (and scrutinizes the shortcomings of each) to illuminate the complexity of religion and belief in Roman Britain. She examines the two-way traffic of cultural exchange and the interplay between imported and indigenous factions to reveal how this period on the cusp between prehistory and history knew many of the same tensions, ideologies, and issues of identity still relevant today.

This book sets out to provide a new synthesis of recent archaeological work in Roman Britain.

Early Medieval Britain is more Roman than we think. The Roman Empire left vast infrastructural resources on the island. These resources lay buried not only in dirt and soil, but also in texts, laws, chronicles - even charters, churches, and landscapes. This book uncovers them and shows how they shaped Early Medieval Britain. Infrastructure, material and symbolic, can work in ways that are not immediately obvious and exert an influence long after the builders have gone. Infrastructure can also rest dormant and be reactivated with a changed function, role and appearance. This is not a simple story of continuity and discontinuity: it is a story of transformation, of how the Roman infrastructural past was used and re-used, and also how it influenced the later societies of Britain.

Engaging account of the Barbarian sack of Rome.

The enormous hoard of beautiful gold military objects found in 2009 in a field in Staffordshire has focused huge attention on the mysterious world of 7th and 8th century Britain. This book discusses the tumultuous centuries between the departure of the Roman legions and the arrival of Norman invaders nearly seven centuries later.

British & Irish history.