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Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain
Shortlisted for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize and the Thwaites Wainwright Prize
This is a book about the encounter with Roman Britain: about what the idea of ‘Roman Britain’ has meant to those who came after Britain’s 400-year stint as province of Rome – from the medieval mythographer-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edward Elgar and W.H. Auden. 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?
Charlotte Higgins has traced these tales by setting out to discover the remains of Roman Britain for herself, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a splendid, though not particularly reliable, VW camper van. Via accounts of some of Britain's most intriguing, and often unjustly overlooked ancient monuments, Under Another Sky invites us 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.
This is a book about the encounter with Roman Britain: about what the idea of ‘Roman Britain’ has meant to those who came after Britain’s 400-year stint as province of Rome – from the medieval mythographer-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edward Elgar and W.H. Auden. 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?
Charlotte Higgins has traced these tales by setting out to discover the remains of Roman Britain for herself, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a splendid, though not particularly reliable, VW camper van. Via accounts of some of Britain's most intriguing, and often unjustly overlooked ancient monuments, Under Another Sky invites us 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.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2013
89 people are currently reading
1278 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Higgins
11 books56 followersCharlotte Higgins is the author of three books on aspects of the ancient world. Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain (Vintage, 2014), was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, the Thwaites Wainwright prize for nature writing, the Dolman travel-writing prize and the Hessell-Tiltman history prize. In 2010, she won the Classical Association prize. Her most recent book Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths (Cape, 2018) was BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
As chief culture writer of the Guardian, she contributes to the Long Read, culture and comment sections; and writes editorials, book reviews and essays. This New Noise, a book based on her nine-part series of reports on the BBC, was published by Guardian-Faber in 2015.
Higgins began her career in journalism on Vogue magazine in 1995 and moved to the Guardian in 1997, for which she has served as classical music editor and arts correspondent.
She has served as a judge for the Art Fund museums prize, the Contemporary Art Society award, and the Royal Philharmonic Society awards. As a broadcaster, she has appeared regularly on BBC Radios 3 and 4. She has also written for the New Yorker, the New Statesman and Prospect.
She is an associate member of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and is on the board of the Henry Barber Trust. She is a keen amateur violinist.
As chief culture writer of the Guardian, she contributes to the Long Read, culture and comment sections; and writes editorials, book reviews and essays. This New Noise, a book based on her nine-part series of reports on the BBC, was published by Guardian-Faber in 2015.
Higgins began her career in journalism on Vogue magazine in 1995 and moved to the Guardian in 1997, for which she has served as classical music editor and arts correspondent.
She has served as a judge for the Art Fund museums prize, the Contemporary Art Society award, and the Royal Philharmonic Society awards. As a broadcaster, she has appeared regularly on BBC Radios 3 and 4. She has also written for the New Yorker, the New Statesman and Prospect.
She is an associate member of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and is on the board of the Henry Barber Trust. She is a keen amateur violinist.
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April 9, 2020 Like Edward Nicholson's lead tablet, plucked from the goddess's sacred spring at Aquae Sulis, Roman Britain can be read well enough if you stare at the traces. Turn it around, though, and it will offer another story (p.229)
In 1066 and all that it says of the Roman conquest of Britain something like 'but we were the natives then so it was all right' part of what this book, a tour around Roman Britain, is about that experience and it's meaning.
You may feel that while there is such a thing as fashionable lateness, attempting to tour Roman Britain goes considerably beyond that. But part of what Higgins has to say is that the country is a palimpsest and in places one can see the older Roman text despite the subsequent writing and reuse on top of it. Alternatively one might argue with R.G. Collingwood that the past is never truly over but remains encapsulated and preserved in later eras, in which case one might play with the left over tesserae from the mosaic of Roman Britain and see what patterns one can make of them, but to do that first you need to tour the territory.
Charlotte Higgins did that partly with her boyfriend in his camper van, partly by day trip and as a journalist she got access to more than many of us might - to see a couple of mosaics from Roman London held in the Bank of England (but not because they are particularly valuable), and to touch the Mildenhall silver among others, she walked the length of Hadrian's and Antonius Pius' Walls. So the book has in addition to a bibliography a (non-exhaustive) county by county listing of suggested places to visit. However the book is not a travelogue, although it could have been.
Instead the experience of travelling is chopped up and the text is organised by regions instead, enhancing the feeling that one is dealing with tesserae and as with the lead tablet referred to above whose first translator declared it to be a letter between two Christians, only for a later scholar to spin the letter upside down (or right side up) and find that it was a standard curse tablet (Roman cursive handwriting inscribed on thin lead sheets is difficult to decipher) so Roman Britain is open to repeated rereadings and specialisations, so the chapter on the Cotswolds and the South-west focuses on the mosaics of Roman Britain, while the chapter on Norfolk has it's eye on the end of Roman Britain. The famous instruction of the Emperor Honorius dated to 408 that the region should look out for its own defence apparently a corruption, it was not Britannia but Italian Brittium that he addressed (p.218)
This allows Higgins to tell many conflicting stories and indeed this makes for a rich picture, or to make a rich mosaic, to continue with the image, there are varieties of interpretation and personal meaning from a sense of a deep past in A.E. Housemanand Wilfred Owen, to the stories of Rosemary Sutcliff with both the the Eagle of the ninth and The Silver Branch discussed in connection with the discovery of an eagle (probably not a military one) in Silchester and the mysterious regime of Carausius, which despite the Virgilian rhetoric of his coins promising the return to the Golden Age of Saturn, didn't last very long.
She pauses to look at Boudica and Caratacus( and his dream ) - who do we cheer for and why (if at all, it was after all a long time ago) and indeed what is involved in the evocation of their warfare.
The double sense from he first page of Britannia as the utmost edge of the Roman world, but also a relative back water that we are surprisingly well informed about is drawn out. I think with it's careful explorations of controversies like the career of Mortimer Wheeler, the ivory braclet lady and the Mildenhall Treasure, the exploration of Silchester and the revelation of pre-Roman urban planning and road building, this is a wayward yet charming introduction to Roman Britain, first take the tour, and then there is more to explore. Unfortunately the book is only illustrated in Black and White, and perhaps it is a little too learned and insufficiently personal - the sense of the impact of the, in places, massive and looming remains of Roman Britain is enjoyable.
And continually there is the question of what the past is, building material for reuse, tourism opportunity, a place to make or find the stories we want to tell about ourselves, a bleak picture of the oppression of empire, or an example to be read in parallel with Britain's own later imperial history. The Victorians to an extent preferred to turn there backs on it, for Thomas Arnold, the Saxons arrived in a Terra nulla, British history was a tubula rasa, it began with Germanic emigrants , the Romans were an interesting irrelevance - (though presumably that was no valid excuse for his pupils at Rugby school not to study their Latin), I think that possibility of historically having one's cake and eating it was shared in France, Napoleon III's regime looks quite neo-Roman in its iconography at the same time as raising up Vercingetorix as a symbol of French Greatness, across the channel Boudica charges about along the banks of the Thames. The inscription on her statue, Regions Caesar never knew/ Thy posterity shall sway demonstrates the problem perhaps, that the savages become, in time, the empire builders and if the empire builders are lucky not all their mosaics shall be ploughed away or all their forts demolished and their stones rebuilt into sturdy farm houses.
In 1066 and all that it says of the Roman conquest of Britain something like 'but we were the natives then so it was all right' part of what this book, a tour around Roman Britain, is about that experience and it's meaning.
You may feel that while there is such a thing as fashionable lateness, attempting to tour Roman Britain goes considerably beyond that. But part of what Higgins has to say is that the country is a palimpsest and in places one can see the older Roman text despite the subsequent writing and reuse on top of it. Alternatively one might argue with R.G. Collingwood that the past is never truly over but remains encapsulated and preserved in later eras, in which case one might play with the left over tesserae from the mosaic of Roman Britain and see what patterns one can make of them, but to do that first you need to tour the territory.
Charlotte Higgins did that partly with her boyfriend in his camper van, partly by day trip and as a journalist she got access to more than many of us might - to see a couple of mosaics from Roman London held in the Bank of England (but not because they are particularly valuable), and to touch the Mildenhall silver among others, she walked the length of Hadrian's and Antonius Pius' Walls. So the book has in addition to a bibliography a (non-exhaustive) county by county listing of suggested places to visit. However the book is not a travelogue, although it could have been.
Instead the experience of travelling is chopped up and the text is organised by regions instead, enhancing the feeling that one is dealing with tesserae and as with the lead tablet referred to above whose first translator declared it to be a letter between two Christians, only for a later scholar to spin the letter upside down (or right side up) and find that it was a standard curse tablet (Roman cursive handwriting inscribed on thin lead sheets is difficult to decipher) so Roman Britain is open to repeated rereadings and specialisations, so the chapter on the Cotswolds and the South-west focuses on the mosaics of Roman Britain, while the chapter on Norfolk has it's eye on the end of Roman Britain. The famous instruction of the Emperor Honorius dated to 408 that the region should look out for its own defence apparently a corruption, it was not Britannia but Italian Brittium that he addressed (p.218)
This allows Higgins to tell many conflicting stories and indeed this makes for a rich picture, or to make a rich mosaic, to continue with the image, there are varieties of interpretation and personal meaning from a sense of a deep past in A.E. Housemanand Wilfred Owen, to the stories of Rosemary Sutcliff with both the the Eagle of the ninth and The Silver Branch discussed in connection with the discovery of an eagle (probably not a military one) in Silchester and the mysterious regime of Carausius, which despite the Virgilian rhetoric of his coins promising the return to the Golden Age of Saturn, didn't last very long.
She pauses to look at Boudica and Caratacus( and his dream ) - who do we cheer for and why (if at all, it was after all a long time ago) and indeed what is involved in the evocation of their warfare.
The double sense from he first page of Britannia as the utmost edge of the Roman world, but also a relative back water that we are surprisingly well informed about is drawn out. I think with it's careful explorations of controversies like the career of Mortimer Wheeler, the ivory braclet lady and the Mildenhall Treasure, the exploration of Silchester and the revelation of pre-Roman urban planning and road building, this is a wayward yet charming introduction to Roman Britain, first take the tour, and then there is more to explore. Unfortunately the book is only illustrated in Black and White, and perhaps it is a little too learned and insufficiently personal - the sense of the impact of the, in places, massive and looming remains of Roman Britain is enjoyable.
And continually there is the question of what the past is, building material for reuse, tourism opportunity, a place to make or find the stories we want to tell about ourselves, a bleak picture of the oppression of empire, or an example to be read in parallel with Britain's own later imperial history. The Victorians to an extent preferred to turn there backs on it, for Thomas Arnold, the Saxons arrived in a Terra nulla, British history was a tubula rasa, it began with Germanic emigrants , the Romans were an interesting irrelevance - (though presumably that was no valid excuse for his pupils at Rugby school not to study their Latin), I think that possibility of historically having one's cake and eating it was shared in France, Napoleon III's regime looks quite neo-Roman in its iconography at the same time as raising up Vercingetorix as a symbol of French Greatness, across the channel Boudica charges about along the banks of the Thames. The inscription on her statue, Regions Caesar never knew/ Thy posterity shall sway demonstrates the problem perhaps, that the savages become, in time, the empire builders and if the empire builders are lucky not all their mosaics shall be ploughed away or all their forts demolished and their stones rebuilt into sturdy farm houses.
August 6, 2013
This reads like an amiable trundle through Britain’s Roman remains – literally and metaphorically. But it’s so much more than that, because Charlotte Higgins wears her learning so lightly, and offers so many routes in to the book. There’s the journey round the country in her boyfriend’s unreliable campervan, reporting on what it’s like to encounter these ruins first-hand. There’s the historical review of other people’s reactions to them, from conjuring nostalgia for ‘better days’ to seeing them simply as a pile of stones better used elsewhere. There’s the grappling with bigger questions, like why our Roman past has been valued above other periods in our history, what role it’s played in the shaping of Britain’s identity, and how it has become a channel for the preoccupations of different ages. As with many of the best essayists, connections are made with ease, the balance between fact and emotion is beautifully done, and you feel thoroughly well taken care of. It was actually only halfway (or thereabouts) through the book that I realized I couldn’t put it down, and that it was expanding almost into a thriller because what emerges is how unpredictable people and time can be, and how meaning often eludes us all.
March 29, 2015
I love nothing more than poking around old ruins, although I'm often pretty ignorant about exactly what I am looking at. Charlotte Higgins would be a marvellous guide.
Firstly she is so enthusiastic about all she sees and that comes across constantly in this wonderful book. But with her academic background she also understands what she sees, and there we part company. She writes beautifully, with an easy, informative way about her that makes it all so interesting.
I liked her method of touring around the country with her boyfriend in their old camper van. Thanks to an excellent section at the back of the book it will now be easy for me to drag my long suffering husband to some more of the various Roman sites listed.
Firstly she is so enthusiastic about all she sees and that comes across constantly in this wonderful book. But with her academic background she also understands what she sees, and there we part company. She writes beautifully, with an easy, informative way about her that makes it all so interesting.
I liked her method of touring around the country with her boyfriend in their old camper van. Thanks to an excellent section at the back of the book it will now be easy for me to drag my long suffering husband to some more of the various Roman sites listed.
June 4, 2015
The Romans short stay in the UK has had a huge and long-term effect on our towns and cities, road and countryside, culture and history. Not only is a lot of their architecture and buildings still visible just under the surface there is an awful lot that is still visible and still standing all around the UK.
On this trip around the UK, Higgins looks for those part still accessible, from the mosaics in museums, to the monument that is Hadrian's wall and the various castles and wall that are still standing 2000 years on. In the narrative she brings the cultural, historical and literary references and most importantly that sense os discovery that you can have by going there your self.
Well worth reading for all things Roman in the UK, Higgins enthusiasm for this part of our history is infectious. It was a shame it wasn't a bit longer, but it does have a huge list of place to visit in the back.
On this trip around the UK, Higgins looks for those part still accessible, from the mosaics in museums, to the monument that is Hadrian's wall and the various castles and wall that are still standing 2000 years on. In the narrative she brings the cultural, historical and literary references and most importantly that sense os discovery that you can have by going there your self.
Well worth reading for all things Roman in the UK, Higgins enthusiasm for this part of our history is infectious. It was a shame it wasn't a bit longer, but it does have a huge list of place to visit in the back.
March 10, 2015
The content of this book was unexpected. The author spent a month or so travelling around Britain, mainly England and Scotland, visiting Roman sites and walking along Hadrian's Wall and The Antonine Wall. While she gives us the history of each site, which is what I was expecting, the main focus was on the men and women who had discovered and excavated them, often wandering off into interesting bits of their biographies that had little or nothing to do with the Romans. I suppose that's what makes it different really. On the whole I found it informative and entertaining, a rare combination. In an appendix, she gives us a brief outline of sites worth visiting relating to each of the chapters. Some of them are on my doorstep and will be easily ticked off, others are further afield and give me a great excuse, if I need one, to plan a few weekends away :).
May 17, 2016
The author makes clear early on that this isn't a look at "how" Roman Britons lived on a day-to-day basis, as much as an examination how of those centuries fit in with (relate to) British history and identity. For example, there's an assumption that the island was entirely Caucasian at the time, when it's clear from testing remains that multi-racial residents with origins across the Empire were far from rare. Tough to explain exactly, but my point is that the author doesn't go from site to site dwelling on artifacts for an extrapolated picture of what the area was probably like back then.
Excellent audio narration brings the adventure to life.
Excellent audio narration brings the adventure to life.
September 3, 2018
On my first visit to the Tower of London I was surprised to see a big chunk of Roman wall just outside the underground station. Rome occupied Britain for centuries so it shouldn't have been surprising. In Under Another Sky the author travels to many of the major Roman sites in the UK. She also writes about the professional and amateur archaeologists who have been fascinated by this period of British history. Now I want to go back to tour these sites!
July 8, 2021
This is one of those books that must be a nightmare for a librarian to classify. Is it history? Archaeology? Art history? Travelogue? Personal memoir? In truth, it's a little bit of all of those things, and a thoroughly enjoyable read besides.
Through her personal odyssey visiting both notable and lesser known Roman sites, Higgins sets out to explore the concept of Roman Britain - not so much the historical reality of it, but the 'idea'. What did Britain mean to the Romans invading it and subsequently writing about it? What did the concept of being 'Roman' mean to those who became citizens and wore the toga? What do we think of today when we think of 'Romans'? How has British history incorporated the Romans into our national narrative? To a very real extent, 'Roman Britain' is a construct - how history has come to view Roman Britain says more about the ways the invaders viewed this land on the edge of the world and how its inhabitants viewed their place in the Roman Empire, than it does reflect the reality on the ground.
As I said, I really enjoyed this book. We are so blessed in many ways in Britain, with so much of historical import and interest remaining intact (some tragic losses and destructions notwithstanding), so many eras and events all compressed within a relatively small space, geographically-speaking. For those, like myself, who are interested in retracing some of Higgins' steps, there is included a helpful guide to all the places she visited - none of which, in this small island of ours, is far enough away to excuse not going!
Through her personal odyssey visiting both notable and lesser known Roman sites, Higgins sets out to explore the concept of Roman Britain - not so much the historical reality of it, but the 'idea'. What did Britain mean to the Romans invading it and subsequently writing about it? What did the concept of being 'Roman' mean to those who became citizens and wore the toga? What do we think of today when we think of 'Romans'? How has British history incorporated the Romans into our national narrative? To a very real extent, 'Roman Britain' is a construct - how history has come to view Roman Britain says more about the ways the invaders viewed this land on the edge of the world and how its inhabitants viewed their place in the Roman Empire, than it does reflect the reality on the ground.
As I said, I really enjoyed this book. We are so blessed in many ways in Britain, with so much of historical import and interest remaining intact (some tragic losses and destructions notwithstanding), so many eras and events all compressed within a relatively small space, geographically-speaking. For those, like myself, who are interested in retracing some of Higgins' steps, there is included a helpful guide to all the places she visited - none of which, in this small island of ours, is far enough away to excuse not going!
January 31, 2015
Although I missed Charlotte Higgins' talk, I bought this at the Harrogate History Festival. A modern examination of what Roman Britain means to us today, plus a camper van - what a hook!
Unstuffy, but packed with facts enough for anybody studying the field, this was a wonderful read. Whether she's camping in the (mostly) trusty VW, staying in farmhouses or B&Bs or simply picnicking and taking time to ponder, we see how deeply engaged the author is with the countryside she is driving and hiking through. She not only gives us the historical background, but shows huge sympathy for people who lived in those Roman places, whether native, colonists, posted military or visitors. I very much enjoyed the accounts of the history of exploration from the earliest observers through the antiquaries to modern archeologists.
But it's the places she visits, their riches, their ruins, their atmosphere that she conveys along with the facts. I have one niggle (if I had to scratch around for one); I would have liked a map of Roman Britain with the places visited marked on it. I have a very good map produced by the OS, but one in the book would have been an handy and valuable reference for readers.
In summary, this book should be on every Roman writer’s reference shelf. Actually, no, on every Roman enthusiast's bookshelf.
Unstuffy, but packed with facts enough for anybody studying the field, this was a wonderful read. Whether she's camping in the (mostly) trusty VW, staying in farmhouses or B&Bs or simply picnicking and taking time to ponder, we see how deeply engaged the author is with the countryside she is driving and hiking through. She not only gives us the historical background, but shows huge sympathy for people who lived in those Roman places, whether native, colonists, posted military or visitors. I very much enjoyed the accounts of the history of exploration from the earliest observers through the antiquaries to modern archeologists.
But it's the places she visits, their riches, their ruins, their atmosphere that she conveys along with the facts. I have one niggle (if I had to scratch around for one); I would have liked a map of Roman Britain with the places visited marked on it. I have a very good map produced by the OS, but one in the book would have been an handy and valuable reference for readers.
In summary, this book should be on every Roman writer’s reference shelf. Actually, no, on every Roman enthusiast's bookshelf.
July 25, 2016
So good, much better than the other two tours of Roman Britain I've been reading (Cottrell and Riley). Higgins explores these sites herself but also includes telling comments and anecdotes from earlier explorers as well as from the Romans themselves. She has an eye for the telling detail, whether her own observations or those of such great characters as archaeologists Collingwood and Hadley. Great bibliography, too.
February 8, 2020
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3328211.html
I am Irish, and was reflecting the other day with a friend born in Iran that the Romans had basically conquered everywhere between our two countries at one time or another. (Roman Armenia of course actually did overlap with present day Iran.) Now of course I live in a former Roman province, with a Gallo-Roman tumulus less than a mile from my home and ten more in the immediate vicinity. I have a big book on Roman remains in Belgium on the unread shelf. But I got seduced by this lovely book by Guardian journalist Charlotte Higgins, going around Britain and looking for the Roman stuff, exploring some places that I know (London, Bath, Silchester where I spent a summer afternoon long ago, Wroxeter) and others that I don't know at all (Roman Scotland, Kent, Essex). She has a good eye for character, both among the past figures who she writes about and the personalities of the present day (the patient boyfriend a little-seen but much-felt presence); and also for landscape - like her, I read Hunter Davis' A Walk Along the Wall many years ago, but she has updated it with reflections on the role of tourism in the survival of the otherwise failing rural economy. I came out of this book with a much longer list of things to see in future.
I did wish that the many photographs had had adjacent descriptions, rather than marooning them all on a separate page.
There are some very moving sections. The affair of Arthur's O'on, a Roman temple which gave its name to Stenhousemuir, almost equidistant between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and destroyed in 1743, is a sad commentary on the different valuation of heritage in the past. The story of Tessa Verney, and her better known husband Mortimer Wheeler, is also not a happy one. but I'll leave you with her lovely note on one of the Vindolanda tablets:
[start]
You can see some of the Vindolanda tablets in the Roman Britain gallery of the British Museum, and they look deeply unimpressive. They are thin, small, brownish rectangles covered with thin, small, brownish writing. And yet, craning my neck at an uncomfortable angle to try to read the indistinct strokes, I found myself with a catch in my throat when I came face to face, for the first time, with a tablet whose text I knew already:
"Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him (?) their greetings.
I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail."
Sulpicia Lepidina was the wife of Flavius Cerialis, the camp commandant. Claudia Severa was the wife of Brocchus, he of the hunting nets. The letter is written in two hands. The body of the note is in a clear, competent script that has been identified on other tablets - perhaps that of a scribe. The sign-off - warm, personal, urgent - in another hand. It is probably, according to the papyrologists, Severa's own. If it is, it means these are the first words to have survived, from anywhere in the empire, in a Roman woman's own handwriting. 'Sperabo te soror, vale soror, anima mea, ita valeam karissima et have,' reads the Latin. The words 'anima mea karissima', my dearest soul, may have been a bland formula ('lots of love'?), but I none the less felt ambushed by the affection and sweetness in them. The fragment contained atavistic magic that scepticism could not entirely blot out. The years seemed to collapse as I read it, picking out the faint, spidery Latin on the dull wood. I read the words over and over again, and thought of the lost life of the woman who wrote them.
[end]
I am Irish, and was reflecting the other day with a friend born in Iran that the Romans had basically conquered everywhere between our two countries at one time or another. (Roman Armenia of course actually did overlap with present day Iran.) Now of course I live in a former Roman province, with a Gallo-Roman tumulus less than a mile from my home and ten more in the immediate vicinity. I have a big book on Roman remains in Belgium on the unread shelf. But I got seduced by this lovely book by Guardian journalist Charlotte Higgins, going around Britain and looking for the Roman stuff, exploring some places that I know (London, Bath, Silchester where I spent a summer afternoon long ago, Wroxeter) and others that I don't know at all (Roman Scotland, Kent, Essex). She has a good eye for character, both among the past figures who she writes about and the personalities of the present day (the patient boyfriend a little-seen but much-felt presence); and also for landscape - like her, I read Hunter Davis' A Walk Along the Wall many years ago, but she has updated it with reflections on the role of tourism in the survival of the otherwise failing rural economy. I came out of this book with a much longer list of things to see in future.
I did wish that the many photographs had had adjacent descriptions, rather than marooning them all on a separate page.
There are some very moving sections. The affair of Arthur's O'on, a Roman temple which gave its name to Stenhousemuir, almost equidistant between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and destroyed in 1743, is a sad commentary on the different valuation of heritage in the past. The story of Tessa Verney, and her better known husband Mortimer Wheeler, is also not a happy one. but I'll leave you with her lovely note on one of the Vindolanda tablets:
[start]
You can see some of the Vindolanda tablets in the Roman Britain gallery of the British Museum, and they look deeply unimpressive. They are thin, small, brownish rectangles covered with thin, small, brownish writing. And yet, craning my neck at an uncomfortable angle to try to read the indistinct strokes, I found myself with a catch in my throat when I came face to face, for the first time, with a tablet whose text I knew already:
"Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him (?) their greetings.
I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail."
Sulpicia Lepidina was the wife of Flavius Cerialis, the camp commandant. Claudia Severa was the wife of Brocchus, he of the hunting nets. The letter is written in two hands. The body of the note is in a clear, competent script that has been identified on other tablets - perhaps that of a scribe. The sign-off - warm, personal, urgent - in another hand. It is probably, according to the papyrologists, Severa's own. If it is, it means these are the first words to have survived, from anywhere in the empire, in a Roman woman's own handwriting. 'Sperabo te soror, vale soror, anima mea, ita valeam karissima et have,' reads the Latin. The words 'anima mea karissima', my dearest soul, may have been a bland formula ('lots of love'?), but I none the less felt ambushed by the affection and sweetness in them. The fragment contained atavistic magic that scepticism could not entirely blot out. The years seemed to collapse as I read it, picking out the faint, spidery Latin on the dull wood. I read the words over and over again, and thought of the lost life of the woman who wrote them.
[end]
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November 30, 2014Higgins tours Britain tracking down remains of the Roman era. I wasn't aware there was so much- forts, amphitheaters, mozaics and of course walls (one of them found in an underground carpark). The Romans dominated Britain from just before the beginning of the modern era until 408 AD and at least two generals Agricola and Septimus Severus laid much to waste. The view is now that the two major walls (Hadrian's and Antonine's) were built less to keep invaders out than they were to project an image of power. Interesting. Famed British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler is effectively profiled and 'Swallows and Amazons' author Arthur Ransome pops up in a cameo role. An able survey of the field.
May 26, 2016
A wonderfully written, enlightening geographic and historical travelogue.
August 16, 2024
Very old school middle-class-teachers-on-holiday Guardian, all camper vans and sandwiches, but also very good, capturing the way Roman Britain is both everywhere and nowhere, and a very useful aid to my official Roman Britain Summer.
June 16, 2014
A lovely, but slightly strange book. Higgins writes of her journies around Britain, in a rather asthmatic VW camper van, in search of the traces of Roman Britain. She writes of the places she visits with a journalist's gift for telling detail and a botanist's delight in plants, and sprinkles the text with fascinating anecdotes about the antiquaries of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries who first went looking for Roman remains in Britain, as well as the archaeologists who followed them in the 20th century. But, at the end of the book, Higgins remains as elusive as, well, Roman Britain itself. I've got very little idea about her, of what she's like - this may be intentional of course - and the four centuries of Roman rule also seem to dissolve away under close inspection. They're obviously not so inaccessible as the centuries that precede or follow them, but where the rest of Empire is illuminated by contemporary writings, Britain seems oddly silent, as if still existing in the mists of Oceanus. The letters discovered at Vindolanda go some way to rectifying that, but they are fragments, frustrating; imagine trying to recreate 21st-century society from a random collection of tweets for a flavour. A fine book, nevertheless, that suggests its subject as well as exploring it.
September 20, 2016
When you read about archaeological sites there is usually a definite lack of time progression. There is what is on the site now and there is the discovery x feet below the surface but nothing about what happened in between the two dates. MS Higgins gives you the whole meal deal right to the ruins at Pevensey where the Roman fort still has walls with Norman and medieval additions as well as Second World War emplacements. We meet Roman Bath as well as the silting up through the medieval period, the popularity through the Georgian period, and the rebuilding of today. It is a rounded out picture, a feeling for the different people who lived in Britain and the influence of all these ruins on the literature of the country. I went back to read Puck of Pook's Hill when I was half way through to remind myself of Kipling's Centurion of the Thirtieth and there was no clash. The story of the Mildenhall Hoard was a good note to end on because it covered different attitudes, modern law, a massive treasure and the Romans all in one.
May 13, 2016
Saw it at the library and grabbed it as I'm interested in pre-colonial American history and thought this was an interesting way to approach ancient British history, combined with memoir. It's clear she was a Classics major at Oxford. Way too much citation of Catullus on Maximus, etc. to be actually readable -- or interesting -- to anyone who didn't study Greek or Latin. The premise was interesting but it didn't bear out.
September 7, 2016
This book blows away many myths of Roman Britain and replaces them with facts. It also shines a well-written light on three centuries of scientific and eccentric antiquaries who unearthed the remnants of Romans in Britain and tried to spin their findings to present an image of that time which corresponded to their views of their present. Great fun.
September 24, 2013
Doesn't sound very promising but so well written and interesting! I recommend downloading the sample for free from kindle and you'll see what I mean
March 5, 2016
This is a lovely, wandering journey in time and topography, artifact and literature. Take it in little tastes, and let the side roads of story and art and history take you off on tangents. Great fun.
August 4, 2021
I think of Roman Britain above all as the place where these islands were begotten in writing. In a landscape that vibrates with stories, where every crag and moor, city and suburb, wasteland and industrial tract has been written into being, the Romans were the first to mould the land in prose. If it is to medieval literature that we owe the idea of Britain as a busy and productive and domesticated land, a ‘fair field full of folk’, then it was the Romans who first made it wild, a land of sudden mists and treacherous marshes, a territory of mountains and impassable rivers. [loc. 3652]
The title comes from Tacitus' account of a speech by Boudica: 'we Britons are cut off from all other men by the Ocean such that most people believe we live in another world, under another sky' [loc. 665]. Higgins spent some time travelling around Britain in a camper van, visiting Roman ruins and reflecting on the people who lived there, and the people who have written about the Romans over the centuries since their departure.
I was moved to read this after a reread of Gillian Bradshaw's excellent and evocative novel Island of Ghosts: I've been interested in Roman Britain since I discovered Rosemary Sutcliff in the school library, and am pleased to find my joy in Sutcliff shared by Higgins. ("The Eagle of the Ninth speaks deeply of its time of writing, during Britain’s post-war era of decolonisation. Reading half a century on, when the the imperial age is viewed in a more critical light, Sutcliff has Esca relate to his master in a way that we might now find troubling." [loc. 1253]) Higgins is very good at showing the past through the filters of different times and cultures: the outrage -- admittedly in the comments section of a Daily Mail article -- when a Roman woman's remains showed she'd been African; the various interpretations of grave goods by antiquarians; the stories that grew up around ruined Roman buildings.
She's an erudite and entertaining writer, and the book is replete with anecdotes about misread curse tablets, troops gathering seashells, the Roman mythologisation of Caratacus and Boudica. She discusses the Romanisation of the British, and the lack of barbarian hordes north of Hadrian's Wall. (I hadn't known that the Wall was originally thought to be the work of Severus.)
A fascinating read, containing accounts of many sites I've visited and some splendid landscape-descriptions. (For instance, the description of the oil refinery at Grangemouth: "Monstrous pipes vermiculated their way around structures made on no human scale.") It made me want to go and wander around ruins myself: it made me want to go out into a historic landscape and consider it.
Wishlisted in about 2014, when I first read reviews of the book: purchased and read this year as part of my non-fiction reading diet.
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March 7, 2025
True rating: 3.75/5
September 13, 2017
Higgins, who has a strong background in classics, explores the history of Britain's time as part of the frontier of the Roman empire. I really like her approach. Rather than just working chronologically through the four centuries during which Rome ruled part of the island, she visits specific sites and objects related to this time, and using them to show how the empire's presence molded (or tried t0) the people and the land.
One aspect of this book that I so appreciated was that she clearly translated the bits of Latin that necessarily pop up in this kind of book, neither assuming that readers have a background in classics, nor speaking down to them. She handled this aspect quite smoothly.
This book really made me wish I'd paid more attention as a 20-year-old visiting a few of these places. And the ending, in which she muses over why artists, historians and politicians lean on the Anglo-Saxons as the harbingers of all things British rather than considering the islands deep Roman roots is quite good, even poetic:
One aspect of this book that I so appreciated was that she clearly translated the bits of Latin that necessarily pop up in this kind of book, neither assuming that readers have a background in classics, nor speaking down to them. She handled this aspect quite smoothly.
This book really made me wish I'd paid more attention as a 20-year-old visiting a few of these places. And the ending, in which she muses over why artists, historians and politicians lean on the Anglo-Saxons as the harbingers of all things British rather than considering the islands deep Roman roots is quite good, even poetic:
If it is to medieval literature that we owe the idea of Britain as a busy and productive and domesticated land, a 'fair field full of folk', then it was the Romans who first made it wild, a land of sudden mists and treacherous marshes, a territory of mountains and impassable rivers A land as ferocious as its people. (p. 230)
February 20, 2022
EDIT five years later: still fucks!
I've been thinking about this book a lot in the few days since I finished it, and I think the major lingering emotion from the reading experience is a kind of nostalgia. I watched a lot of Time Team growing up and the book has the same feeling of methodical exploration and emphasis on social history that had me so hooked as a kid. I found myself finished each chapter with a kind of melancholy creeping over me; possibly this is because I've always had an issue with over-empathising with the past. Lots of sad thoughts about the suppression of Celtic identity, etc.
I particularly enjoyed the book's discussion of Boudica as a historical figure and as a developing myth - I'd never realised there was a dispute over whether she even existed, although I agree with the author that Boudicea's Cross is a way better name than King's Cross. The critical lens on Tacitus was also very interesting, and the insight into the way Roman culture valued rhetoric in historical record was illuminating for some of the denser texts I've read on the period.
I've been thinking about this book a lot in the few days since I finished it, and I think the major lingering emotion from the reading experience is a kind of nostalgia. I watched a lot of Time Team growing up and the book has the same feeling of methodical exploration and emphasis on social history that had me so hooked as a kid. I found myself finished each chapter with a kind of melancholy creeping over me; possibly this is because I've always had an issue with over-empathising with the past. Lots of sad thoughts about the suppression of Celtic identity, etc.
I particularly enjoyed the book's discussion of Boudica as a historical figure and as a developing myth - I'd never realised there was a dispute over whether she even existed, although I agree with the author that Boudicea's Cross is a way better name than King's Cross. The critical lens on Tacitus was also very interesting, and the insight into the way Roman culture valued rhetoric in historical record was illuminating for some of the denser texts I've read on the period.
August 10, 2018
If the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there, as LP Hartley once said, then Roman Britain is an distant world. It existed an impossibly long time ago, and was populated by impossibly alien peoples. This is Charlotte Higgins' central argument. We cannot fully know or understand the world of Roman Britain, as the gulf that separates us is too great.
But that doesn't stop fragments shining through the millennia. Higgins does a great job of helping the reader to understand some of the traces that have come down to us. And she also does an excellent job of looking at how people since have used these traces to project their own spin on to Roman Britain, and what they have taken from it. It is as much a book about what people since the Romans have thought about them, and themselves, as about what the Romans did for us.
But that doesn't stop fragments shining through the millennia. Higgins does a great job of helping the reader to understand some of the traces that have come down to us. And she also does an excellent job of looking at how people since have used these traces to project their own spin on to Roman Britain, and what they have taken from it. It is as much a book about what people since the Romans have thought about them, and themselves, as about what the Romans did for us.
May 12, 2015
An okay book. Not the place to go if you are wanted to read History (I use the capital H deliberately). Essentially slight, a bit of a ramble. Some attempts at poetic writing about her own travels which are slender but often freighted with either symbolic import or attempts at poetic style. A bit of history from here and there, some Roman, some relating to Roman remains. A bit of everything and therefore nothing much. Not a bad book, but not especially insightful or inspiring. I think a lot of people would really enjoy this, especially those who know nothing about the period, but it's not my style.
March 27, 2019
A wonderful journey around Britain telling the story of the Romans in the island, from Caesar's first brief forays across the channel through to the attempts to conquer Caledonia, the arrival of Christianity, and finally the petering out of the Roman Empire.
I picked up the book for the Roman history, but as I was reading I realised that it was more alive when the author was talking about the people and stories behind the archaeological finds, and her own travelogue.
I picked up the book for the Roman history, but as I was reading I realised that it was more alive when the author was talking about the people and stories behind the archaeological finds, and her own travelogue.
July 16, 2016
An interesting and readable tour of some of Britain's best Roman remains and artefacts given a quirky, personal twist by the author who combines anecdotes, classics and site reports to give a background to each item.
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May 19, 2018
I read the intro and parts of a couple chapters. I'm putting this library book back on the shelf, and I've ordered a pb to take with me to England. This will be good bedtime reading once Jim joins me for our vacation.
November 16, 2019
A superb travelogue slash historiography. This book is a keeper. It has a decent index, is properly referenced and has a useful visitors guide as an appendix. It has kindled my curiosity to read more and visit the places she writes about.
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