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. Whilst Christopher Hadley’s book makes no mention of this Python skit, ‘The Road’ tells us why the Python crew were correct. The road Hadley walks has been largely lost over the many centuries since it was constructed - all that remains is a mere route. For two thousand years they have determined the flow of ideas and folktales, where battles were fought and where pilgrims trod.

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 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. Time and nature have erased many clues; they rotted bridges and raised whole woods across the route. His pieces have appeared in The Independent , The Guardian , The Times , London Review of Books , Esquire and his local parish magazine, among many other publications. 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.

A touchstone into one of the most fascinating periods in British and European history that still has resonance today. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. 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. As the Britons fell back to the Thames, the road pursued them to the river’s edge, carrying troops, supplies and military despatches. I found the author's interpretation of a Boudican war origin for the fort at Great Chesterford of particular interest.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. Along the way we learn about how roads were sited, construction methods, how roads were used by and against (e.

This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. Hadley's writing moves seemingly randomly from descriptions of hedgerows, to parish history and into archaeological analysis and then back again. He explains how roads initially built by the Romans for military and strategic purposes became economic highways for spreading trade, especially in pottery, and ideas.

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.