Under Another Sky: Journeys In Roman Britain

Description

"Shortlisted for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, the Thwaites Wainwright Prize and the 2014 Dolman Travel Book Awardhis 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 Skyinvites 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."

Promotion info

A journey around the archeological and cultural remains of Roman Britain by the award-winning author of It's All Greek to Me.

Reviews

"Wonderfully written and full of unexpected facts. Higgins brings Roman Britain into the present." -- Richard Sennett "Beautifully crafted. The beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and the precision with which she skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy that she shows for the myth-makers, the men and woman who so very much wanted their very own Roman Britain." -- Peter Stothard The Times "Smart and up-to-date, sensitive but hard-headed, impeccably researched but gloriously poetic. The layering of themes, moods and topics is staggering. There's nothing like quite it." -- Tom Holland, author of 'Rubicon' and 'Persian Fire' "In her gentle, fine prose, [Higgins] suggests convincingly that Britain was thoroughly changed by its two Roman invasions, and that modern Britain is still built on a Roman skeleton." -- Harry Mount Daily Telegraph "Charming, intriguing and not-infrequently elegiac... What is most impressive here, rather than either the erudition of the endeavour, is simply the writing." -- Stuart Kelly Scotsman

Author description

Charlotte Higgins was born in Stoke-on-Trent and studied Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. She is the Guardian's chief arts writer.