Roman Britain is given a beating heart by author Guy de la Bedoyere
A new Roman history of Britain has been written by a local historian looking in detail at the personal lives of individuals from the period.
Guy de la Bedoyere has published his latest work, The Real Lives of Roman Britain, the latest in a large body of work he has written on ancient history.
Guy, who lives near Grantham, has written about the Roman period in Britain to enlighten us on how people lived under the Roman occupation on these shores 2,000 years ago.
While the main events from 55 BC to AD 410 are little disputed, and the archaeological remains of villas, forts, walls and cities explain a great deal, there is relatively little known about individual lives.
This book is the first to infuse the story of Britannia with a beating heart, the first to describe in detail who its inhabitants were and their place in our history.
A lifelong specialist in Romano-British history, Guy is the first to cover the period exclusively as a human experience. He focuses not on military campaigns and imperial politics but on individual, personal stories.
Roman Britain is revealed as a place where the ambitious scramble for power and prestige, the devout seek solace and security through religion, men and women eke out existences in a provincial frontier land.
Guy introduces us to characters who lived here at the time – Fortunata the slave girl, Emeritus the frustrated centurion, the grieving father Quintus Corellius Fortis, and the brilliant metal worker Boduogenus, among numerous others. Through a wide array of records and artefacts, the author introduces the colourful cast of immigrants who arrived during the Roman era, while offering an unusual glimpse of indigenous Britons, until now nearly invisible in histories of Roman Britain.
Guy is author of Roman Britain: A New History and many other histories of Roman Britain widely admired for their accessibility. He is also author of the popular volume The Romans for Dummies.
Guy will also be familiar to TV viewers for his appearances on Time Team and has introduced and appeared on numerous other programmes including live transmissions from Egypt and Pompeii.
Guy has a degree in history and archaeology from Durham University and an MA in archaeology. After university he worked as a sound engineer for the BBC before moving into full-time freelance work as a writer and broadcaster. More recently he has also worked as a teacher.