This is a book whose evocative description of Roman ruins will transport you in a day dream to what was and will never be again. So many interesting details to google for more information. The author writes of British archaeologists, historians, antiquarians, and philosophers who wrote about the Romans in Britain and emphasizes how British history has been unkind to its Roman roots preferring instead to laud the Anglo Saxons as the true founders of British society. ( )

A narrative exploration and travelogue of Roman remains in Britain and the changing idea of Roman Britain through recent times. I found early on that I didn't actually have enough interest in any of these aspects to truly enjoy this book, but I happened to have it from library during the shutdown, so finish it I did. Some interesting tidbits about various finds, writers, historical figures... honestly no disrespect to the author, I think it's well-written, just not a topic that held my attention for more than a few pages at a time. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2021/07/2021087-under-another-sky-journeys-in.htm... ( )

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. ( )

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] ( )