August, 55BC, off the Kent coast, near Deal. And the Romans have arrived...
‘How, wearing heavy legionary armour, do you cross the deck of a beached transport ship? The surf makes the ship roll awkwardly. You feel tired, perhaps sick. Your limbs are cramped and stiff. You grip the rail, feeling the crusted salt...’
This is how the legionary must have felt. No Roman army had ever stepped foot on to this mysterious, fog-shrouded island before. What horrors awaited? Besides, that is, the ferocious Britons themselves, who loved nothing more than fighting.
This bravura, multifaceted new history of the Roman conquest of Britain brings it to life with such detail and cinematic vividness it’s impossible not to call it ‘epic’.
The brief episode with Julius Caesar in 55 and again in 54BC was really a PR stunt, to cement his reputation as a great general back home. It achieved next to nothing. He didn’t even get as far as the fabled and hugely lucrative tin mines of ‘Belerion’ – Cornwall.
