Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain

by Charlotte Higgins

Overview

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468312362
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	278
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Charlotte Higgins is the author of Greek Myths: A New Retelling. Her previous books include the acclaimed Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, which was shortlisted for UK awards including the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) prize for non-fiction, and Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and won the Arnold Bennett prize 2019. She is chief culture writer of the Guardian, a past winner of the Classical Association prize, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

List of Maps xiii

A Note on Names xv

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1 Kent and Essex 5

Chapter 2 Norfolk 25

Chapter 3 London 43

Chapter 4 Silchester 60

Chapter 5 Wales and the West 75

Chapter 6 Bath 93

Chapter 7 Hadrian's Wall 111

Chapter 8 Scotland 137

Chapter 9 York 161

Chapter 10 Cumbria and the Lakes 179

Chapter 11 The Cotswolds and the South-West 198

Chapter 12 Norfolk, again, and Sussex 214

Notes 231

Places to Visit 241

Bibliography 251

Acknowledgements 263

Index 265

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Beautifully crafted. The beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose . . . It is in the sympathy that she shows for the myth-makers.” —Peter Stothard, The Times

Editorial Reviews

Under Another Sky weaves Britain's history and contemporary landscape together into a complex and fascinating account that is part travelogue, part history and wholly charming.”

Shelf Awareness

[Higgin's] analyses are often supplemented by excellent diversions covering a variety of topics, including thehistoriography of Roman Britain, the ethic makeup of Roman legions, and the depth of Christianpenetration into the British population. Historians will continue to debate the Roman influence, but Higgins makes a convincing argument that Britain would be a very different place without that influence.

Booklist (Starred Review)

Between visits to famous places like Bath, York and Hadrian's Wall, Higgins pays lots of attention not just to the original purpose behind the leavings of this vanished empire but to the musing of the archaeologists who spent their careers digging up its shards . . . readers will glean some revelations.

New York Times Book Review

★ 2015-05-13
Inquiring into the deep sources of British identity. A classicist and chief arts writer for the Guardian, Higgins (It's All Greek to Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World, 2010, etc.) crafts a delightful, deeply informed recounting of her journeys across Britain in search of its ancient Roman past. Whenever the Romans landed—possibly in 55 B.C.E.—they encountered an Iron Age Celtic society of regional tribes living in settlements of thatched roundhouses. Although contemporary archaeologists imagine the Celts had developed a "sophisticated culture" with "a wealthy elite," they were unable to resist Rome's military invasion in 43 C.E. and subsequent encroachment throughout the land. Visiting museums, talking with researchers, and marshaling a prodigious number of memoirs, histories, and travel books, Higgins illuminates Roman presence in Kent and Essex, London and York, Norfolk and the Cotswolds. In Bath, costumed interpreters portray Romans as "friendly, unthreatening, familiar"; Higgins, though, wonders if "there were other stories that might be buried in the stones…stranger and more frightening ones," stories suggested, for example, by curse tablets, thrown into Bath's sacred waters, containing "appeals to the goddess of the spring to punish those who have done you wrong." The author also chronicles her walk along Hadrian's Wall, built in 122 C.E. and extending 74 miles. "This wall in the wilds of northern Britannia divides nowhere from nowhere," she observes. Although some archaeologists thought the wall marked the northernmost Roman habitation, recent discoveries show that the empire extended into Scotland. Roman rule ended around 408 C.E.; scholars disagree about the causes and also about the extent to which Britons were "Romanized." Some argue that "the Roman-ness of Britain was at best a thin veneer," and others question whether Rome's "vulnerable military" encountered fierce guerrilla resistance. Unresolved, too, are questions about the spread of Christianity under the Romans. An appendix offers a guide for visiting Roman remains throughout Britain. A thoroughly researched, elegantly written history.

Kirkus Reviews