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. 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. Erudite and fascinating insight into the expertise and experience needed to draw conclusions from sometimes meagre or partial evidence left on (under) the ground of that incredible and useful legacy of Roman occupation, the straight(ish) road.

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. Whilst Christopher Hadley’s book makes no mention of this Python skit, ‘The Road’ tells us why the Python crew were correct. Along the way we learn about how roads were sited, construction methods, how roads were used by and against (e.Then I became overwhelmed with the micro detail of the local landscape and although many of stories and folklore Hadley draws in are compelling, as a reader I ran out of steam! The shock and awe experienced by the bewildered Britons that the construction of a rapid troop transport system by a supremely organised and skilled group of soldiers can only be imagined. 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.

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. 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. 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. For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod. This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book… wonderful prose .Great book, engaging, thought provoking, interesting, informative and poetic - a connection with the past at a time when we need to remember that the past is still with us. Weaving in culture and local history, plus countryside insights, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing read. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

As the Britons fell back to the Thames, the road pursued them to the river’s edge, carrying troops, supplies and military despatches. Temporary campaign roads followed, rolling out west towards Rochester and the first major battle at the Medway. I read through the references, I've bought more books on the subject and I went back and forth between the book and Google Earth at several points.Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc's phrase, 'all that has arisen along the way'. Any shared joy I can glean - such as over the use of delightful antiquated words that are doubly delightful for their utter uselessness - feels somewhat unclean. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.