Christopher Hadley > Quotes

“You have discovered the difference between freedom in humble circumstances and slavery amid riches,’ shouted Boudicca to the rebels in a speech put into her mouth by the Roman authors.”
― Christopher Hadley, The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

“we should rightly marvel at the engineering skill of those who built a road that in part could withstand such conditions for so long, that maintains a surface dry enough to be a friend to hornbeam and bluebells in the spring while the damp woodland floor carries ash, hazel, field maple and dog’s mercury. Enough of a continuous dry surface that a little yellow, five-fingered flower could find its slow way to its favourite nesting spots.”
― Christopher Hadley, The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

“It is to rediscover a world where the community was in part defined by its collective memory, by its pride in its past, and a story its members had passed down through the generations: to wrestle with their superstition, what they really believed and what that tells us about them, their priorities and their needs (and about us too for that matter, how we are different and how very much still like them).”
― Christopher Hadley, Hollow Places: An Unusual History of Land and Legend