Description

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 one’s 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, the 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 Belloc’s 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.

Publisher Review

PRAISE FOR CHRISTOPHER HADLEY'S HOLLOW PLACES 'Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley's book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year' Sunday Times 'A sensitively intelligent excavation into Hertfordshire history, the English imagination and omnipresent myth' Country Life 'Christopher Hadley's celebration of English folklore across 800 years delights in these imaginative tales which have shaped and coloured the cultural landscape of the nation ...Enriching and at times surprising ... Anchored by memorable tales, the narrative over-turns long-held historical beliefs as it goes ... Hollow Places has an innate charm ... The book's real success lies in being alert to what makes these superstitions and rituals special - the understanding that imagination trumps truth' TLS 'Hadley wears his scholarship lightly but at the heart of this antiquarian wild goose chase is an ingenious meditation on what history, in all its complexity and unevenness, really is.' Guardian 'Enthralling' The Oldie 'This meditation on the power of folk myth lives up to its billing as an 'unusual history'. It's also engaging, wide-ranging stuff, exploring how stories become ties that bind' BBC History Magazine 'The past is animated with imagination and knowledge ... Shonks and his story, the tomb and the now vanished yew are a starting point for a digressive and affectionate exploration of a local tradition that has survived for 800 years ... Authoritative and well-researched.' Spectator 'Both the piercing dissection of a folktale and a thrilling rummage into the thickets of the English imagination. In fluid and satisfying prose, Hadley succeeds in transforming the most outwardly parochial of subjects into a means of illuminating the tangled roots of storytelling ... there are few subjects more compelling.' Thomas Williams