As I began my sabbatical project on the world of the New Testament on our doorstep in Roman Britain I asked a Classics Teacher to recommend the best narrative history of the Roman conquest and of early Roman Britain. He recommended short extracts from Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Tacitus’s Annals, Histories and above all his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola who in six years as Governor of Britannia completed the conquest in about 77–83 CE. Tacitus’s account could be supplemented by reference to Suetonius and Cassius Dio. In Table 3. And so that is where I started. I list below the books I used; the references to Britain can be found in Table 3.
All those sections relevant to Britain have been brought together in a single volume by Stanley Ireland. I will start my recommendations with his sourcebook of Roman Britain. He also draws extensively on inscriptions, coins, writing tablets and other artefacts to illustrate the history and the world of Roman Britain. Make sure you get the third edition. He collaborated with Stephen Hill on a companion volume which amounts to a brief narrative history based on these sources.
Ireland, Stanley. Roman Britain: A Sourcebook. 3rd edn. London; New York: Routledge, 2008.
Hill, Stephen, and Stanley Ireland. Roman Britain. London: Bristol Classical, 1996.
I am glad that I went back to the originals right at the outset. All modern narrative histories of Roman Britain are heavily dependent on these Roman historians. I begin with the edition of Caesar I used when studying Latin in school, and then recommend a more recent translation. I have also drawn on the Loeb editions.
Warner, Rex, trans. War Commentaries of Caesar. New York: Mentor Books, 1960.
Caesar, Julius. The Gallic War Seven Commentaries on The Gallic War with an Eighth Commentary by Aulus Hirtius. Translated by Carolyn Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Tacitus. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Revised. Translated by Michael Grant. London: Penguin, 1996.
Tacitus. The Histories. Revised. Translated by W. H. Fyfe and D. S. Levene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Tacitus. Agricola and Germania. Revised. Translated by Harold Mattingley and J. B. Rives. London: Penguin Classics, 2009.
Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Catharine Edwards. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Three modern historians combine a narrative and thematic approach to the history of Roman Britain. Peter Salway’s large Oxford History, was shortened by the omission of detailed footnotes and published as an illustrated history, and then as A History of Roman Britain. It was effectively abbreviated again as one of Oxford’s Very Short Introductions. That and the above short book by Ireland and Hill make an excellent entry-level way into the history of Roman Britain.
Salway, Peter. Roman Britain. The Oxford History of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Salway, Peter. The Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Salway, Peter. A History of Roman Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Salway, Peter. Roman Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Similar approaches are taken by Sheppard Frere and Malcolm Todd.
Frere, Sheppard. Britannia: A History of Roman Britain. 3rd edn. London: Pimlico, 1991.
Todd, Malcolm. Roman Britain. 3rd edn. Blackwell Classic Histories of England. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999.
Guy de la Bédoyère offers a lavishly illustrated history, that draws on narrative history and archaeological research to focus on the lives of ordinary people.
Bédoyère, Guy de la. Roman Britain: A New History. Revised. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
One of the most recent histories of Roman Britain, and from the point of view of Imagining Luke-Acts in Roman Britain one of the most useful, is by Richard Hingley. Noticing the way in which the conquest of Britain was celebrated by Claudius and later by the Flavians following Agricola, he entitles his book Conquering the Ocean. Two tables at the end identify place names in Roman Britain and the names of local peoples.
Richard. Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
David Mattingly adopted a very different approach. Rejecting a narrative and thematic approach, instead he focused on the disparate identities of different people and communities throughout Britain during the Roman period in An Imperial Possession: The Military Community, The Civil Communities, and The Rural Communities. He emphases the differences across Britain and concludes by speaking of Different Economies and Discrepant Identities. Within his overall scheme he offers reflections on the narrative history as appropriate and has excellent timelines. He is, I believe, the first to speak extensively of the curse tablets of Britain and the insight they give into the life of a rural community. His history was followed up by a refection on Imperialism, Power and Identity in which again he explores the notion of ‘discrepant identities’. David Mattingly had earlier collaborated with Barri Jones to produce what remains the main Atlas of Roman Britain.
Mattingly, D. J. An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409. London: Penguin, 2007.
Mattingly, D. J. Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. New edition. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Jones, Barri, and David Mattingly. An Atlas of Roman Britain. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
A major work on the lives of Women in Roman Britain is very important, not least in the context of the Vindolanda Tablets.
Allason-Jones, Lindsay. Women in Roman Britain. 2nd edn. York: Council for British Archaeology, 2005.
Guy de la Bédoyère has written a popular account of the lives of ordinary people in Roman Britain.
Bédoyère, Guy de la. The Real Lives of Roman Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Richard Hobbs and Ralph Jackson use the displays in the Roman Galleries of the British Museum to give a glimpse of ‘life at the edge of empire’. This is an excellent book to accompany a visit to the British Museum.
Hobbs, Richard, and Ralph Jackson. Roman Britain: Life at the Edge of Empire. London: The British Museum Press, 2010.
Roger Tomlin tells the story of Roman Britain and the life of those who lived here through all kinds of inscriptions, including the Bloomberg Tablets, the Vindolanda Tablets and the Uley Tablets.
Tomlin, R. S. O. Britannia Romana: Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2020.
Barry Cunliffe is one of the foremost experts on the Iron Age, the Celts and Roman Britain. Simon James explores the world of the Celts. Celts, Art and Identity is the book that accompanied a major exhibition at the British Museum. Living in South Wales, the story of the Silures, as told by Ray Howell, caught my imagination.
Cunliffe, Barry W. Britain Begins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
James, Simon. Exploring the World of the Celts. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
Hunter, Fraser, and Julia Farley, eds. Celts: Art and Identity. London: British Museum and National Museums of Scotland, 2015.
Although out of print, Roger Wilson’s Guide to the Roman Remains in Britain is worth getting hold of if possible. A pocket-sized book it gives an account, with detailed diagrams, of most of the places to visit in Roman Britain. The much more recent and readily available guide by Denise Allen and Mike Bryan gives a briefer account of each of those places with coloured photos. It too is immensely useful. The most recent Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain is an excellent guide too. Be it said, however, that it locates only Roman settlements, giving the impression whole swathes of the country are empty. David Mattingly is critical of the map as it does not include sites associated with local peoples. William Manning offers a very useful pocket guide to Roman Wales.
Wilson, Roger J. A. A Guide to the Roman Remains in Britain. Constable, 2002.
Allen, Denise, and Mike Bryan. Roman Britain and Where to Find It. Stroud: Amberley, 2020.
Cleary, S. E. Map of Roman Britain. 6th edn. Southampton: Ordnance Survey, 2011.
Manning, William. Roman Wales: A Pocket Guide. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001.
In my map of Roman Britain (Figure 1), I have endeavoured not only to locate places mentioned in the text of the book, but also to give an account of Celtic peoples, their production of coins and their friendly kings. The map also notes the extent of the curse tablets and key roads. I hope to provide links to those locations mentioned that have visitor centres or museums connected with them.
The Roman Britain website is an excellent Gazetteer and Guide to those locations and many more.