The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

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In the beginning was Watling Street, the first road scored on the land when the invading Romans arrived on a cold and alien Kentish shore in 43 CE. Whilst a portion of Hadley’s road appears at start of each new section, a fold out version which showed the entire road in a broader situational context would have been useful. It's not perfect, and there are definitely moments when Hadley loses control of his prose and both he and you get a bit lost.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). Nowadays a long straight road is considered boring and dangerous to drive along - we prefer curves to keep us awake - but the excitement of realising we are sometimes travelling a road initially constructed 2,000 years ago along our exact path helps connect us to the generations who have undertaken the same route, marching, riding, droving, walking (or driving) for two millennia. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. There is equal pleasure in following him through the countryside in all seasons, sharing his reflections on how echoes of past millennia continue to be part of our present experience.

A wonderful read which gives you the real sense of being a Roman in Britain, revealing how the world you know around you was shaped by your very ancestors. Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape, poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks; oxlips, killing places, hauntings, immortals and things buried too deep for archaeology, The Road is a mesmerising journey into two thousand years of history only now giving up its secrets. We all think we know about Roman roads because they are straight, but this book shows there is far more to them than that. A bad elevator pitch might have been something like, 'So I have an author who's written a book about a walk along a minor Roman road and a few interesting tales that arise en route.

Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Loving The Road , [it’s] about a Roman road but also a rumination on the past and our relationship with it. Readers who take the time to be patient with Hadley's poetical lyrical style of writing should enjoy meandering with him down the Road.In the beginning was Watling Street, the first road scored on the land when the invading Romans arrived on a cold and alien Kentish shore in 41 CE. This kind of energy to a piece of writing, or a ‘posher than the queen’, deliberately obtuse Brian Sewell quote, always reminds me of the infamous tale recounted in Sir Kenneth Dover’s autobiography where, when walking in the Italian hills, he was so overcome with the beauty and poeticism of the moment that he proceeded to masturbate to completion.

Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape from poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks, oxlips, killing places, hauntings and immortals, and things buried too deep for archaeology, The Road is a mesmerising journey into two thousand years of history only now giving up its secrets. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). Then I realised that the last time I thought much about the subject was when I was at school in the 70s and my brother and I used to play with 1/72nd scale 'Romans and Britons'. Hadley's writing moves seemingly randomly from descriptions of hedgerows, to parish history and into archaeological analysis and then back again.

Along the way we learn about how roads were sited, construction methods, how roads were used by and against (e. Time and nature have erased many clues; they rotted bridges and raised whole woods across the route.

I admit that my pitch barely sounds any better but, well, I'm glad Hadley made it, his agent touted it and William Collins accepted it. Hadley takes us down a different way, looking through a gentler window on that road's long lost days. The joy of this book though is not simply to be found in how Hadley attempts to reconstruct the Roman past from trenches and ceramic shards buried in the landscape. Sir Dover is the only one afflicted by the deeply self-obsessed British public school old boy mentality, in my opinion, who has ever so honestly and openly recognised it for what it is - wanky sybaritic self-indulgence.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.