Despite my fascination with history there are some fairly huge gaps in my knowledge. For example, apart from Marlborough, most of the 18th c. is a vague and woolly fog for me, a condition I hope to rectify shortly by reading Frank McLynn's "1759: The year Britain became master of the world". Also, most of my 'knowledge' of the medieval comes via Shakespeare, a great playwright but not too hot as an accurate historian! However, there is one period about which I know nothing and that absence of knowledge is like a pebble in my shoe - it nags at me. The period I wonder about constantly is what might be called the decline and fall of the Roman empire in Britain.
Some years ago I was lucky enough to visit Herculaneum near Naples. Most visitors go to Pompeii but they are mistaken. Pompeii was covered in hot ash which burnt the city down so there is relatively little to see; Herculaneum, on the other hand, was covered in lava and mud, and by a miracle of brilliant and careful excavation it has been uncovered almost intact. Of course, Herculaneum was a small spa town to which the rich citizens of Pompeii retreated during the hot, and smelly, periods of summer. The streets are deliberately narrow in order to curtail noisy cart traffic and the horse droppings that come with it. The interior decor of the buildings has been preserved and the result is that you can narrow your eyes and easily imagine what life for a wealthy Roman citizen might be like. Such a civilised life-style gradually arose in Britain under the Romans but within a few hundred years it had totally disappeared, and the country entered the Stygian gloom of the dark ages. It was my curiosity as to how such a civilised (in the broadest sense of that word) and sophisticated society simply crumbled and dissolved that has nagged away at me over the years.
Now my curiosity has been assuaged with Simon Young's book "Farewell Britannia: A family saga of Roman Britain". Lest the word "saga" leads you to think this is a novel with historical pretensions, let me assure you that it is the very opposite, it is an impeccably academic history made all the more palatable by being wrapped in a fiction. Simon Young has a starred First in history from Cambridge and knows where-of he writes; and if that is not sufficient, then let me tell you that the ever-excellent Dr. Peter Jones gave it a 'rave review'. This book gives you a citizen's eye view of life from 55AD to 410AD in Britannia. As Young points out in the preface "In the 5th century [...] the Romano-British economy collapsed, towns emptied, long distance-trade broke down, learning and technical know-how vanished, and into this confusion came a riot of different barbarians - above all the Anglo-Saxons ..." Hmmmn, and what does that remind you of, I wonder?
Please, I beg you, read this marvellous book.
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