Roman Britain: A New History

There are numerous books on the subject of Roman Britain, but this one wins out by taking into account the latest archaeological evidence and presenting it as even handedly as possible. De la Bedoyere comes at the subject with no spurious theories to peddle and so the book is refreshingly honest in its approach. He deals with the basic history of the province in the first three chapters, the conquest, the consolidation and the decline. What comes across is the author's evident love of the subject and his wish to engage the reader without dumbing the subject down.

The remaining chapters deal with different aspects of the Roman occupation - the military, the economy, the effect on the indiginous population etc etc. The book is full of great photographs, artist's impressions and diagrams that bring the world of Roman Britain to life. What he repeats is how little we really know and how much of what is accepted as fact is merely conjecture. For instance, we don't know the name of one single owner of a Roman Villa in Britain. We're not even sure some sites called ‘villas' were actually villas. The whole history of the province has to be pieced together from coinage, inscriptions, the invaluable resource of the Vindolanda letters and mentions in other sources found in other parts of the Empire.

What is striking is the decline after the departure of the last Roman Legions. Within a couple of generations the whole infrastructure had fallen apart, major towns were in ruins and villas demolished and abandoned. There is no clear evidence as to why this happened so quickly. Safe to say that theses Islands would not be affected so fundamentally on every level of society until the Industrial Revolution. The Roman occupation was that radical.

Thoroughly readable, this book is recommended to anyone interested in the history of these Isles.