Farewell Britannia: A Family Saga Of Roman Britain - Softcover

Young, Simon

3.45

56 ratings by Goodreads

9780753823705: Farewell Britannia: A Family Saga Of Roman Britain

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753823705 ISBN 13: 9780753823705

Publisher: W&N, 2008

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The story of Roman Britain told by a family who lived there. It is AD 430 twenty years since the legions abandoned Britain. Realising that the Roman world he grew up in is doomed the senior member of a Romano-British family resolves to preserve his family's history . . . Brilliant historian Simon Young has invented a multi-generational family part Roman part Celtic to tell the dramatic story of 400 years of Roman rule in Britain. Vivid historical detail is balanced by a real feel for the psychological depth of the individual stories. The narrator is writing this 'family history' in 430 AD realising the Romans will never return. He chooses 14 of the most interesting but not always the most admirable of his ancestors.

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Review:

Hugely entertaining . . . What a joy to be able to recommend a book about misery, bloodshed and grisly superstition for being funny, compassionate and clear-eyed (Independent on Sunday)

Informative and entertaining, this is popular history at its best (Financial Times)

For imaginative and thrilling engagement with the history of those often shadowy and chaotic times, Farewell Britannia will be very hard to beat (Peter Jones Sunday Telegraph)

There is no snatch of straw so recherch�, it seems, that Young cannot somehow spin gold out of it (Tom Holland Spectator)

Enjoyable and ingenious, this breathes life into the period (Scotland on Sunday)

Young reinvents with a rare combination of scholarship and imagination (Peter Parsons Literary Review)

The Celtic and Dark Age historian Simon Young has had a brilliant idea. He has decided he is a sort of Herodotus of 6th century AD Britain and Ireland . . . Extremely enjoyable and informative (Journal of Classical Teaching)

Simon Young offers nugget after nugget of fascinating detail to paint a colourful portrait of a time when native savagery was being tempered by the arrival of Christianity in a country on the cusp between druidic power and the first cold grip of Church rule . . . This bawdy, picaresque and high-spirited book . . . wears its considerable learning lightly and opens a windown on a time long neglected (Ireland on Sunday)

the greatest acheivement of this magnificent work is its success in breathing life into real people (THE HERALD)

Book Description:

A vivid and gripping account of Roman Britain, told by a family who lived there

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