I remember being taken to see a Roman villa as a child, and although I'm not sure exactly where it was (probably Verulamium), I do remember being underwhelmed. If the Romans were so great, I thought, why were their buildings so ruined? Charlotte Higgins might have had similar thoughts once, for she starts this captivating book standing on the pier at Deal in Kent, near where Julius Caesar is said to have landed his first invaders. She confronts many more such absences in her energetic search for Roman remains: for all that is known about the people who shaped this country, so much remains to be discovered.
Britain was to the Romans what Tasmania was to Victorians: somewhere at the edge of the known world. People who inhabit such places can be viewed either as savages in need of educating or the untouched whose state of grace should be preserved. The Romans mostly did the former. Or at least their administrators and soldiers did. One of many things Higgins makes clear is how few Romans there were in Roman Britain, even though this was no outpost of empire: in Londinium, the long-lost basilica holding law courts and senate was the largest building north of the Alps. The scant remains of Roman London are included in Higgins's search, but so too are sites from Kent to Colchester to Hadrian's Wall and beyond.
Under Another Sky succeeds so brilliantly because it does several things well. It reminds us of the extent of the presence and the achievements of ancient Rome on this island. It revisits the stories of the antiquaries and, later, the archaeologists whose work and often obsession have filled in the physical gaps of the Roman presence to create a fuller picture of what Roman Britain might have looked like. And in her descriptions of crossing the country on foot and in a 70s VW camper van, Higgins infects us with her own enthusiasm, as well as that (and the occasional annoyance) of people who live around ruins or who have been inspired by them.
WH Auden was one of the latter, imagining in his poem Roman Wall Blues a soldier staring into the northern mists, his thoughts far south, singing, "I want my girl and I want my pay." This book will provide plenty of diversion if you are short of either.
