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.

This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book… wonderful prose . 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.Thought there'd be more to it, but there are some interesting historical asides here and there, even if, for some reason, I felt it'd be a lot more focused on the attempt to follow a forgotten Roman road than it was. This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. Readers would be better served with the images printed on better paper bound into the centre of the book. These kind of books just aren’t for me but somehow I find myself pulled in again and again, tricked by good reviews or cursed with a gift I feel obligated to try. I found the author's interpretation of a Boudican war origin for the fort at Great Chesterford of particular interest.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).Time and nature have erased many clues; they rotted bridges and raised whole woods across the route. A bad elevator pitch might have been something like, 'So I have an author who's written a book about a walk along a minor Roman road and a few interesting tales that arise en route. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Readers who take the time to be patient with Hadley's poetical lyrical style of writing should enjoy meandering with him down the Road. Any shared joy I can glean - such as over the use of delightful antiquated words that are doubly delightful for their utter uselessness - feels somewhat unclean. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. 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.Along the way we learn about how roads were sited, construction methods, how roads were used by and against (e. 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. As the Britons fell back to the Thames, the road pursued them to the river’s edge, carrying troops, supplies and military despatches. And good for him and anyone who genuinely enjoys 275 pages of a bloke slipping into verse and panegyric over the remains of a road! The road Hadley walks has been largely lost over the many centuries since it was constructed - all that remains is a mere route.

But the attempt to truly and earnestly show the road as it has been throughout all of its history is such an ambitious one that I can forgive him those topples into pretension, because there is so much that is fascinating and beautiful and wonderful, and I think he gets quite close to what he's trying to do. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Sir Dover is the only one afflicted by the deeply self-obsessed British public school old boy mentality, in my opinion, who has ever so honestly and openly recognised it for what it is - wanky sybaritic self-indulgence. Whilst Christopher Hadley’s book makes no mention of this Python skit, ‘The Road’ tells us why the Python crew were correct.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.