British society had embraced the arms race. ibid.
Tribal warfare, human sacrifice, this was a savage land for sure. ibid.
Claudius wanted an emphatic and unforgettable way of impressing on his subjects – the people of southern Britain – just what kind of a ruler they were dealing with. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain 43 A.D.- 410 A.D.
The Romans were here and the Third Age of Britain had begun. ibid.
Cogidubnus was a puppet and the Romans pulled his strings. ibid.
Leading the attack was a woman with waist-length hair and piercing eyes – Boedica. ibid.
Pre-Roman Britain was illiterate. ibid.
The Romans made it their business to change our way of life ... The epitome of Romanisation was the bathhouse. ibid.
Without the army and an organised government the cities decayed. ibid.
By the beginning of the 5th century A.D. the Roman Empire was showing its weakness, and it began to crumble territory by territory. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain 410 A.D. – 1066 A.D.
The Fourth Age of Britain – a time when England would become wealthy and independent. ibid.
It was only a matter of time before the Saxons were back on English soil ... The Anglo-Saxons were pagan. ibid.
By the end of the 6th century A.D. what we now call England had been transformed by a wave of Anglo-Saxon immigrants. ibid.
Christian missionaries were streaming into the country. ibid.
For better or worse the institution of marriage had arrived. ibid.
Young Bede – he was to become the best known author of his age. One of the forefathers of British writing. ibid.
The world described by Bede was about to come under attack. ibid.
It was the beginning of a prominent Viking presence in British life. But it wouldn’t all be rape and pillage. ibid.
A prime British target – the town of York. ibid.
William and a handful of barons then imposed one of the most brutal governments this country has ever seen. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain 1066 A.D. – 1350 A.D.
A mania for building massive stone structures. ibid.
Feudalism was the key to Norman success. ibid.
Peasants in England were standing up for themselves. ibid.
The Black Death had arrived and within three years it would wipe out half of the population. ibid.
When the Plague arrived in Britain one chronicler described it as, ‘Death coming into our midst like a black smoke. A rootless phantom of no mercy.’ Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain: The Sixth Age: 1350 A.D. – 1530 A.D.
The poll tax of 1380: everyone rich or poor over the age of fifteen had to pay twelve pence – a massive sum. ibid.
The freedom fighters soon paid for the revolt with their lives. ibid.
The legal profession was booming in medieval Britain. ibid.
The ravages of the black death had almost halved the male labour force. ibid.
Women flourish as apprentices to trade. ibid.
The monk Bede was a brilliant scholar and intellectual who wrote the very first history of England. Professor Bettany Hughes, Divine Women III: War of the Word, BBC 2010
In the year A.D. 43 soon after the death of Jesus Christ 40,000 Roman soldiers descended on Britain intent on conquest. Bettany Hughes, The Roman Invasion of Britain I: Onslaught, History 2009
The Romans ruled Britain for the best part of 400 years. ibid.
Britain at that time wasn’t the unified country we know today. ibid.
The eight hundred or so ships that made up the invasion force ... They failed to spot any armed warriors at all ... The Romans formed a battle-line and waited for the Britons to attack. ibid.
Claudius derived great kudos from the fact that he had conquered Britannia. ibid.
At least eleven tribes submitted to Roman rule without so much as raising a sword. ibid.
There was plenty of fighting spirit left in Britain. ibid.
Boedica: her uprising was cataclysmic in its scope; it claimed the lives of thousands of Roman settlers. ibid.
In the first century A.D. a massive Roman invasion force descended on British shores. The guerrilla war that followed dragged on for seventy years. Bettany Hughes, The Roman Invasion of Britain II: Revolt
They reckoned without a force of Nature: an extraordinary woman called Boedica. ibid.
The Iceni were Boedica’s clan. ibid.
Seventy-three miles and twenty-feet high in places the Wall ... functioned as an instrument of social control. ibid.
Roman Britain wasn’t the idyllic era it’s sometimes cracked up to be. ibid.
Grand country houses, villas, sprang up all over southern Britain during the Romano-British era. Bettany Hughes, The Roman Invasion of Britain III: Dominion
The Romans turned taxation into a fine art. ibid.
We simply don’t know what percentage of Britain’s population was taken into slavery during the Roman era. ibid.
The city was a Roman alien thing. ibid.
More than two million squares miles was under Roman control. ibid.
Britannia Superior which had its capital in London and Britannia Inferior which was governed from York. ibid.
The British people finally made a stand ... Around 408 A.D. there was a mini-revolt. ibid.
Their long fierce dominion over this country paved the way for Britain’s emergence as a unified nation state. ibid.
Here in Britain around 60 A.D. It was the day Roman forces flogged and dishonoured the Queen of a proud native tribe, and it triggered an uprising the likes of which Rome had never seen. Bettany Hughes, Eight Days that Made Rome e5: Boudica’s Revenge
The leader of the revolt was Boudica: still a British icon today. ibid.
Boudica’s defeat of the 9th legion would have shocked the Romans. ibid.
This is Must Farm in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire ... During the Bronze Age this settlement collapsed into the marshy fens. Alice Roberts, Britain’s Pompeii: A Village Lost in Time, BBC 2016
This site has been dubbed Britain's Pompeii. ibid.
A name carved on a gravestone: Bodicacia. Could this be the first reference found in archaeology of our Great British heroine – Boudica? Alice Roberts & Neil Oliver, The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice III, BBC 2015
As well as being extremely sophisticated craftsmen, the Iceni and many tribes like them have long enjoyed ancient trading links. ibid.
No other era has captured our imagination quite like Roman Britain ... The work of some of our greatest historians and archaeologists. Alice Roberts, Roman Britain: A Timewatch Guide, BBC 2015
Why in the end did it all fall apart? ibid.
Was this a welcomed arrival or a hostile takeover? ibid.
The problem with orchestrated Roman Christianity was that it was an alien force imposed on the people of Britain. Dr Robert Beckford, Christianity: A History: Dark Ages s1e3, Channel 4 2009
To be a Christian king was to be part of a universal community that spread across Europe to Rome and beyond. So there were the added benefits of trade and also cultural exchange. To be a member of the Christian club brought enormous benefits. But even so there was still no such thing as a united church in Britain. ibid.