• The most authoritative history of Roman Britain ever published for the general reader. • "A comprehensive and accessible history of Roman Britain" BRITISH MUSEUM MAGAZINE; "Anyone with even a basic interest in the past may have a hard time putting this book down" MINERVA. • Weaves the ‘voices’ of individuals into the story of Roman Britain. • Patricia Southern is an acknowledged expert on Roman Britain. • Patricia Southern’s narrative incorporates the results of the latest research; competing histories currently in print are all over 20 years old. • Illustrated with almost 100 photos, maps and diagrams, many in color. For nearly four centuries, from AD 43 to 410, Britain was a small province on the northwestern edge of the vast Roman Empire. Patricia Southern’s masterly new history tells the story from first contact, through invasion and conquest, coexistence to eventual decline incorporating the political, social and cultural history of ‘Britannia’. For the first time the wealth of ‘voices’ from the varied population of Roman Britain are placed center stage in the narrative. Indirectly via the works of ancient historians, analysts and biographers, and directly from building inscriptions, religious dedications, gravestones, graffiti, leaden curse tablets, artifacts and coins. Writers such as Gaius Julius Caesar, the geographer Strabo, the historian Tacitus, and the annalist Cassius Dio, describe Britain and the main historical events, but perhaps the most vivid source is the corpus of letters from the fort at Vindolanda in Northumberland, where named individuals talk about birthday parties and complain about the terrible state of the roads…