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

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A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year Sunday Telegraph

On nearly every page a random passage takes ones breath away The Times

Have you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road
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. Almost everyone in Britain lives close to a Roman road, if only we knew where to look.

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. Campaign roads rolled out to all points of the compass, forcing their way inland and as the Britons fell back, the roads pursued them relentlessly, carrying troops, supplies and military despatches. In the years of fighting that followed, as the legions pushed onwards across what is now England, into Wales and north into Scotland in search of booty, mineral wealth, land and tribute, they left behind a vast road network, linking marching camps and forts, changing the landscape, etching the story of the Roman advance into the face of the land, channelling our lives today.

Christopher Hadley, acclaimed author of Hollow Places, takes us on a lyrical journey into this past, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. His passage is not always easy. Time and nature have erased many clues; bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route. Carters found an easier ford downstream, and people broke up its milestones to mend new paths. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of it; the once mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow-way, a parched mark in the soil.

Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Bellocs phrase, all that has arisen along the way. 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.

Reviews

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

Theres something beguilingly mysterious about these ancient roads . . . When searching for his road, Hadley makes full use of his senses. . . the breadth of his knowledge . . . the beauty of his prose. This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. On nearly every page a random passage takes ones breath away The Times, Gerard DeGroot

Magnificent . . . exciting . . . This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book wonderful prose . . . striking images and lapidary sentences enthralling. Its an absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year Sunday Telegraph, Harry Sidebottom

In this magnificent book. . . Hadley takes us down a different way, looking through a gentler window on that road's long lost days. He reveals The Road's own intimate knowledge of the land it knew and the folk it's known, turning the tables on what we think we're reading; because The Road is not really about it, it's about us Mythical Britain, Michael Smith author of King Arthur's Death

Loving The Road, [its] about a Roman road but also a rumination on the past and our relationship with it. [An] excellent companion piece to his previous book about a dragon slayers tomb. The pair offer a whole new and very exciting model for how to do local history. Highly recommend Dr Kelcey Wilson-Lee author of Daughters of Chivalry

Ingeniously constructedscholarlywears its learning lightly is engagingly writtenand always a pleasure to read Country Life

The book offers a wealth of historical knowledge in a fashion which is entertaining and readable combines scholarly depth with wonderfully lyrical depictions of the English landscapeLiterary Review

Author Bio

Christopher Hadley is a journalist and author. His pieces on such popular subjects as 18th-century religious tracts have appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, London Review of Books, Esquire and his local parish magazine, among many other publications. Hollow Places, an account of his search across a thousand years of British history for the dragon-slayer Shonks, is his first history book. Christopher is married with three children, whom he hopes will never grow-out of hunting for dragons and other marvels in the Hertfordshire countryside where they live.