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

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Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc's phrase, 'all that has arisen along the way'. Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc’s phrase, ‘all that has arisen along the way’. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit.

Whilst a portion of Hadley’s road appears at start of each new section, a fold out version which showed the entire road in a broader situational context would have been useful. There is equal pleasure in following him through the countryside in all seasons, sharing his reflections on how echoes of past millennia continue to be part of our present experience. Drawing on the findings of years of work by dedicated archaeologists, aerial photographers and historians, Hadley travels the length of a spur of Ermine street in the direction of Great Chesterford pondering how and why it was built and the lives of the people who travelled or lived along it.Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape, poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks; oxlips, killing places, hauntings, 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. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. 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. Christopher Hadley is a journalist and author writing at the murky, wonderful intersection of history and folklore.

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. 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. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. 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.Great book, engaging, thought provoking, interesting, informative and poetic - a connection with the past at a time when we need to remember that the past is still with us. Erudite and fascinating insight into the expertise and experience needed to draw conclusions from sometimes meagre or partial evidence left on (under) the ground of that incredible and useful legacy of Roman occupation, the straight(ish) road.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Loving The Road , [it’s] about a Roman road but also a rumination on the past and our relationship with it. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. The road Hadley walks has been largely lost over the many centuries since it was constructed - all that remains is a mere route. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book… wonderful prose .

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 41 CE. Readers who take the time to be patient with Hadley's poetical lyrical style of writing should enjoy meandering with him down the Road.It’s a meandering journey, journal, essay, something, written with that very specific British wanky-ness that some people just love. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. I admit that my pitch barely sounds any better but, well, I'm glad Hadley made it, his agent touted it and William Collins accepted it. Time and nature have erased many clues; they rotted bridges and raised whole woods across the route.