Under Another Sky
Journeys in Roman BritainSelect a format:
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Summary
**NOW A HIT STAGE PRODUCTION**
Take a journey around the archaeological and cultural remains of Roman Britain with the award-winning author of Greek Myths.
This is a book about the encounter with Roman Britain: about what the idea of 'Roman Britain' has meant to those who came after Britain's 400-year stint as province of Rome - from the medieval mythographer-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edward Elgar and W.H. Auden. What does Roman Britain mean to us now? How were its physical remains rediscovered and made sense of? How has it been reimagined, in story and song and verse?
Charlotte Higgins has traced these tales by setting out to discover the remains of Roman Britain for herself, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a splendid, though not particularly reliable, VW camper van. Via accounts of some of Britain's most intriguing, and often unjustly overlooked ancient monuments, Under Another Sky invites us to see the British landscape, and British history, in an entirely fresh way: as indelibly marked by how the Romans first imagined, and wrote, these strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world, into existence.
'Mesmerising... Sophisticated and passionate' Guardian
'[A] lyrical, haunting look at Roman Britain and its echo in our culture' Sunday Times
Take a journey around the archaeological and cultural remains of Roman Britain with the award-winning author of Greek Myths.
This is a book about the encounter with Roman Britain: about what the idea of 'Roman Britain' has meant to those who came after Britain's 400-year stint as province of Rome - from the medieval mythographer-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edward Elgar and W.H. Auden. What does Roman Britain mean to us now? How were its physical remains rediscovered and made sense of? How has it been reimagined, in story and song and verse?
Charlotte Higgins has traced these tales by setting out to discover the remains of Roman Britain for herself, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a splendid, though not particularly reliable, VW camper van. Via accounts of some of Britain's most intriguing, and often unjustly overlooked ancient monuments, Under Another Sky invites us to see the British landscape, and British history, in an entirely fresh way: as indelibly marked by how the Romans first imagined, and wrote, these strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world, into existence.
'Mesmerising... Sophisticated and passionate' Guardian
'[A] lyrical, haunting look at Roman Britain and its echo in our culture' Sunday Times
Reviews
Wonderfully written and full of unexpected facts. Higgins brings Roman Britain into the present.
Richard Sennett
