Farewell Britannia

Hugely entertaining . . . What a joy to be able to recommend a book about misery, bloodshed and grisly superstition for being funny, compassionate and clear-eyedIndependent on Sunday

The story of Roman Britain, told by a family who lived there.

It is AD 430, twenty years since the legions abandoned Britain. Realising that the Roman world he grew up in is doomed, the senior member of a Romano-British family resolves to preserve his familys history . . .

Brilliant historian Simon Young has invented a multi-generational family, part Roman, part Celtic, to tell the dramatic story of 400 years of Roman rule in Britain. Vivid historical detail is balanced by a real feel for the psychological depth of the individual stories.

The narrator is writing this family history in 430 AD, realising the Romans will never return. He chooses 14 of the most interesting, but not always the most admirable, of his ancestors. The big events of Roman Britain are all here: scouting for Caesars expedition in 55 BC; the Roman invasion in 43 AD; Boudiccas revolt and the massacre of 70,000 Romans; the Pict attacks on Hadrians Wall; the great Barbarian Conspiracy of 367; and the sudden cataclysmic departure of the legions in 410.

But there are plenty of non-military episodes: spying on the Druids; a centurion dreaming of retirement with a young slave he has bought; an ambitious wife on the northern frontier; a bad poet in Londinium; infanticide in Surrey; a young Christian girl facing martyrdom in a British amphitheatre.

Popular history at its bestFinancial Times
There is no snatch of straw so recherché, it seems, that Young cannot somehow spin gold out of it Tom Holland, Spectator
Enjoyable and ingenious, this breathes life into the periodScotland on Sunday