Genre: Non-fiction

Review – How Flowers Made Our World

Posted May 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – How Flowers Made Our World

How Flowers Made Our World

by David George Haskell

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 352
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

An exquisite exploration of the power of flowers, placing them at the center of the story of how evolution created the world we know today.

We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don’t get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their aesthetics, not their power. In this exquisite exploration of the role flowers played in creating the world we know today, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less celebrated flowers such as seagrasses and tea to show us what we’ve been missing.

Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: Gorgeous petals and alluring aromas transformed former enemies into cooperative partners. Flowers reinvented plant sexuality and motherhood, bringing male and female together in the same flower and amply provisioning seeds and fruits, innovations that also feed legions of animals, ourselves included. Through radical genetic flexibility, flowers turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rainforests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species. Flowers catalyzed our evolution, and we now depend on them for food and a healthy planet. When we perfume ourselves, give a loved one a bouquet, or use blooms in gardens and religious ceremonies, we honor the special bond between people and flowers. The study of flowers also shaped modern science and horticulture in ways both marvelous and, sometimes, unjust.

Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and the latest in scientific research to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.

My main comment on David George Haskell’s How Flowers Made Our World is a plea for even pop-science writers (and, perhaps more to the point, publishers) to use numbered endnotes to give sources. Without knowing the specific source of a particular claim (“X plant does X% of carbon sequestration”), it’s impossible to evaluate the truth of the claim.

I can say that where I do know my stuff, Haskell’s not wrong or exaggerating — I’m not by any measure a botanist, but my first degree was in natural sciences (emphasis biology), so I do have some grounding in stuff like plant respiration, plant growth, etc. But it’s impossible to call him on the details without reading literally everything that he read.

I did find the close study of various plants and species interesting, all the same; many of his descriptions are based on things you can observe yourself if you like (assuming you’re in the right location for the plant, of course), and it’s always fascinating to read someone enthusing about a pet subject. I suspect it’s largely preaching to the choir about the importance and beautiful diversity of plant life, and the need to protect it, but it’s still an important message.

I think at times it got a bit too wordy or too focused on reporting details of the author’s conversations (e.g. with his sister about an expedition to find seagrasses), but it was fairly readable and the author’s enthusiasm does a lot to hold interest.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Ramesses the Great

Posted May 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Ramesses the Great

Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings

by Toby Wilkinson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

The life, dramatic reign, and enduring legacy of the pharaoh Ramesses the Great, with lessons for the present, from internationally acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson

Ramesses II ruled the Nile Valley and the wider Egyptian empire from 1279 to 1213 B.C., one of the longest reigns in pharaonic history. He was a cultural innovator, a relentless self-promoter, and an astute diplomat—the peace treaty signed after the Battle of Kadesh was the first in recorded history. He outbuilt every other Egyptian pharaoh, leaving behind the temples of Abu Simbel; the great hypostyle hall of Karnak; the tomb for his wife Nefertari; and his own memorial, the Ramesseum.

His reputation eclipsed that of all other pharaohs as well: he was decried in the Bible as a despot, famed in literature as Ozymandias, and lauded by early antiquarians as the Younger Memnon. His rule coincided with the peak of ancient Egypt’s power and prosperity, the New Kingdom (1539–1069 B.C.).

In this authoritative biography, Toby Wilkinson considers Ramesses’ preoccupations and preferences, uncovering the methods and motivations of a megalomaniac ruler, with lessons for our own time.

I really enjoyed Toby Wilkinson’s Ramesses the Great: I remember reading one of Wilkinson’s books before and finding that it dragged, but this really didn’t. It helps that Ramesses the Great is a larger-than-life figure, and can be made incredibly vivid through an account of his reign.

Despite reading a fair number of general histories of Egypt, I’ve never read a lot about his dynasty before, so there was a fair bit here that was actually new to me. Ramesses the Great looms large in the landscape of Egypt, both literally and figuratively thanks to his massive building works and the way he’s echoed in the stories told about Egypt and the stories Egypt has told about itself, and Wilkinson’s book makes it really clear why that is.

Ramesses II is compelling: he turned what was at best a stalemate into a stunning victory by simply selling the narrative confidently enough, made peace with the Hittites, had a truly astonishing number of children, built/restored/took credit for a ridiculous number of building projects/statues/temples, and reigned for 66 years. I loved reading about the stories he told about himself, his choices to change the art style of Egypt, the choices made about his tomb… and Wilkinson did a great job of explaining the evidence and putting together a readable narrative here as well, while making it clear what we can and can’t know. You get a sense of Ramesses II’s personality, even as Wilkinson reminds us we can’t judge that so easily based on a king’s public proclamations.

One detail I loved: the part about Khaemweset, one of Ramesses’ sons, who was essentially an Egyptologist, going round restoring monuments from older dynasties to the glory of his father (and sometimes himself).

So yeah, overall, really liked this one!

Rating: 5/5 (“loved it”)

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Review – Boring Postcards USA

Posted April 27, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Boring Postcards USA

Boring Postcards USA

by Martin Parr

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 176
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The author has now turned his attention to the USA with 160 of the dullest postcards from the land of opportunity. The book provides not only amusement, but a commentary on how America has changed, and a celebration of those places that have been forgotten by conventional history.

Someone highlighted Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards USA to me because pretty much everyone knows about my Postcrossing hobby (and the fact that I work there!) by this point, ahaha.

Even though it’s about “boring” postcards, it’s actually quite fun to look at and wonder about why the postcards were made, who might have sent/received them, etc — they’re mundane subjects, but there is interest there, especially looking back on the 50s/60s/70s cars, interior design, etc, that show up in the images (and of course as a non-American).

Some of them aren’t that boring, depending on your point of view: I know plenty of Postcrossers who’d love to receive them!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Library of Ancient Wisdom

Posted April 22, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 10 Comments

Review – The Library of Ancient Wisdom

The Library of Ancient Wisdom

by Selena Wisnom

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 448
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

More than half of human history is written in cuneiform, but only a few hundred people on earth can read it. In this captivating new book, Assyriologist Selena Wisnom takes us on an immersive tour of this extraordinary library, bringing ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life. Through it, we encounter a world of astonishing richness, complexity and sophistication. Mesopotamia, she shows, was home to advanced mathematics, astronomy and banking, law and literature. This was a culture absorbed and developed by the ancient Greeks, and whose myths were precursors to Bible stories - in short, a culture without which our lives today would be unrecognizable.

When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian emperor Ashurbanipal, seventh century BCE ruler of a huge swathe of the ancient Middle East known as Mesopotamia. After his death, vengeful rivals burned Ashurbanipal's library to the ground - yet the texts, carved on clay tablets, were baked and preserved by the heat. Buried for millennia, the tablets were written in cuneiform: the first written language in the world.

The Library of Ancient Wisdom unearths a civilization at once strange and strangely familiar: a land of capricious gods, exorcisms and professional lamenters, whose citizens wrote of jealous rivalries, profound friendships and petty grievances. Through these pages we come face to face with humanity's first civilization: their startling achievements, their daily life, and their struggle to understand our place in the universe.

Selena Wisnom’s The Library of Ancient Wisdom examines the world of ancient Mesopotamia by using the famed library of Ashurbanipal as a jumping-off point. This isn’t as futile as you might think: the ancient baked clay tablets have survived beautifully, with even shattered tablets being pieced back together, so we actually have quite a wide spread of literature available to us. The British Library wouldn’t survive nearly as well in the same circumstances: paper might be more versatile, but baked clay has serious staying power.

There’s a range of texts in what we have from that ancient library, in any case: medical texts, religious texts, literature, letters both domestic and foreign. It’s necessarily a somewhat limited picture, all the same, focusing primarily on the king and his family, so it’s important to remember that the extraordinary level of preservation still doesn’t tell us anything about the world further afield.

I liked that Wisnom reminds the reader several times that the Mesopotamian world wasn’t primitive; though they had beliefs that seem to us wild superstition, they didn’t believe them in spite of the world they could readily observe around them. Their gods were capricious and imperfect, and could make mistakes and change their minds — and thus the omens and portents they saw around them were warning and possibilities, not set in stone. Lamentations, prayers and sacrifices could avert evil. And in fields like astronomy and maths, they knew things which took “Western civilisation” millennia to recover.

Given my interests, I was especially interested to note their views on hygiene, including carefully washing your hands. They didn’t attribute it to microbes, of course, but to curses which could be transferred between people — but that’s a pretty good understanding for practical purposes! Contrast with the modern Western world, where Ignaz Semmelweiss was literally treated as insane for suggesting an evidence-based approach to pueperal fever. No, I’m not kidding: he proposed that doctors should wash their hands with disinfectant between performing autopsies on rotting bodies and delivering babies, and he literally died in an insane asylum (of septic shock; you can’t make it up, can you?).

My only caveats here would be that obviously it’s a deeply biased way to see Mesopotamian society since you only really see what concerns the king (even if that does give you glimpses of his family and advisors, they’re all high ranking too), and that it can be difficult to keep track of the geopolitics sometimes if you don’t have a good head for it — keeping a map handy and writing notes might have helped me a bit there!

Rating: 5/5 (“loved it”)

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Review – The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs

Posted April 9, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs

The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs

by Riley Black

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 236
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Despite their cultural influence, the grand narrative of the dinosaur story is rarely told. Most of us have heard of Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, for example, but these two dinosaurs lived more than eighty million years apart--a greater span of time than the entire post-T. rex history of the planet. Furthermore, we often know even less about the environments these animals lived in--the other animals and plants inhabiting a dramatic changing Earth alongside the dinosaurs.

The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs tells the full story, a 230-million-year epic of small beginnings, spectacular golden periods, and eventual global domination--before an unthinkable asteroid event brought everything to a screeching halt, covering the major moments in evolution, extinction, and ecology. We learn that, for millions of years in the Triassic, dinosaurs were dog-sized--but slowly developing evolutionary traits like feathers and warm-bloodedness that would set them up for future success. In the Jurassic Period, these traits--and others like laying eggs and growing specialized air sacs--led to an era of rapid growth in dinosaur population and physical size. As Pangea continued to break apart, during the Cretaceous Period, dinosaurs traversed the globe, adapting to air and water--before a six-mile-wide asteroid hit Central America and brought the age of dinosaurs to a fiery end.

Using countless recent fossil discoveries, fresh understandings of genetics and evolution, and over fifty illustrations and maps, author Riley Black reveals the startling relationships dinosaurs shared with each other, the land they lived on, other animal species, and the earth as a whole.

You’d think I wouldn’t need a general history of dinosaurs — after all, I’ve read a bunch of books about dinosaurs, including highly specific ones like Spinosaur Tales (by David Hone and, unsurprisingly, about spinosaurs). But the consensus among palaeontologists changes swiftly, and in fact has changed since this was published last year… so I was eager to read Riley Black’s The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs, especially as I’ve enjoyed Black’s other books.

One part I found really interesting was the suggestion that Tyrannosaurus rex dominated its ecosystem, with T. rex individuals of different ages occupying different niches. What did I read today but an article in New Scientist saying that, well, actually we’ve probably gone back to thinking that Nanotyrannus is a different species, because we’ve found a small one that shows signs (in the bone) of being fully grown, while much smaller than a T. rex adult.

Palaeontologists will probably argue back and forth about this one for a while longer, because I was actually aware of the Nanotyrannus debate and as far as I know it’s swung between the two poles of opinions a couple of times now.

Regardless, the point is that even a general history of the dinosaurs can change quite quickly, and Black does a good job of presenting current consensus (while referencing the fact that there’s much we aren’t sure of, and that dinosaurs are actually a fast-moving area of research).

It’s very clearly presented in themed chapters, with black-and-white illustrations included, and doesn’t go too deep into technical detail, while explaining some mechanics of things like dinosaur chewing and digestion — it’s a good balance, I think.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Part of a Story that Started Before Me

Posted April 7, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Part of a Story that Started Before Me

Part of a Story that Started Before Me

by George the Poet (editor)

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Poetry
Pages: 272
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Part of a Story That Started Before Me is an extraordinary new collection of poems chosen by acclaimed spoken-word performer and social commentator George the Poet.

Taking readers on a thought-provoking poetical journey through Black British history, the anthology brings together some of the most exciting wordsmiths from across the diaspora and fascinating era-by-era notes from historian Dr Christienna Fryar.

From Africans in Roman Britannia to the first Black actor to play Othello on stage, from Malcolm X's visit to the West Midlands to highlighting an organizer of the UK's first Gay Pride, this important collection reveals unsun people and events from our past to recognize the intrinsic impact they've had on Britain today.

Part of a Story that Started Before Me (edited by George the Poet) is a collection of poems about Black British History, reflecting on historical figures and moments in verse, and also providing short introductions to the position of Black people in those periods for almost all of them — there’s just one section without, for some reason.

The majority of the poems are in the most modern sections, despite the premise; there’s just a handful for most historical periods before WWII. The poems themselves aren’t dated, though a few are definitely a touch older (like the Derek Walcott and Grace Nichols ones); I don’t know if any were prompted/commissioned specifically for this volume.

I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the poems, though that’s almost immaterial since here they’re doing their job of reflecting on history. (Plus, gotta note that a couple did stand out, in a couple of cases because they had such a great rhythm and sense of sound that you almost couldn’t help but hear them.) I personally wouldn’t choose it as a poetry collection, but it was worth the read, including for the historical and editorial context provided.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Monsterland

Posted April 1, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Monsterland

Monsterland: A Journey Around The World's Dark Imagination

by Nicholas Jubber

Genres: Travel, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 353
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?

In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we’ve invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth — giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons — all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.

His far-ranging adventure takes him across the world. He sits on the thrones of giants in Cornwall, visits the shrine of a beheaded ogre near Kyoto, travels to an eighteenth-century Balkan vampire’s forest dwelling, and paddles among the shapeshifters of the Louisiana bayous. On his travels, he discovers that the stories of the people and places that birthed them are just as fascinating as the creatures themselves.

Artfully written, Monsterland is a fascinating interrogation into why we need these monsters and what they can tell us about ourselves — how they bind communities together as much as they cruelly cast away outsiders.

Nicholas Jubber’s Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination is half-travelogue, half folklore, where each chapter begins with a snippet of fiction about a monster — one version of potentially many stories about the monster in question — and then follows Jubber as he visits the locations, participates in local customs or speaks to local people about their stories, and generally tries to dig a bit into their origins and impacts.

This is kind of not my thing in some ways, since I wasn’t interested in the travel aspect, and sometimes the participation in the customs and rituals felt a bit he was gawking at the locals — I don’t doubt his genuine interest and intent to be respectful, but his shock/fascination over stuff like the guy hurting himself while worshipping Aicha Kandicha felt… well, kinda prurient, all the same. In that case, literally gawking at something someone held sacred, a transcendent moment for the person in question, and then sharing the shock and surprise of that moment with us, an audience entirely removed from that context.

I did enjoy dipping into a variety of different folkloric monsters, and the way the last section looked at modern monsters (Frankenstein, the robots in R.U.R., Godzilla) and their appeal as well. Jubber did well at evoking an atmosphere in certain places, and mostly stayed on the side of respectful about others’ beliefs while being profoundly sceptical himself. I was just more into the monsters than the travelogue aspect, so some parts didn’t click so well with me.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – A History of England in 25 Poems

Posted March 29, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – A History of England in 25 Poems

A History of England in 25 Poems

by Catherine Clarke

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Poetry
Pages: 400
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation’s past, and the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived it.

These poems open windows onto wildly different worlds – from the public to the intimate, from the witty to the savage, from the playful to the wistful. They take us onto battlefields, inside royal courts, down coal mines and below stairs in great houses. Their creators, witnesses to events from the Great Fire of London to the Miners’ Strike, range from the famous to the forgotten, yet each invites us into an immersive encounter with their own time.

A History of England in 25 Poems is a portal to the past; a constant companion, filled with vivid voices and surprising stories alongside familiar landmarks, and language that speaks in new ways on each reading. Catherine Clarke’s knowledge and passion take us inside the words and the moments they capture, with thoughtful insights, humour and new perspectives on how the nation has dreamed itself into existence – and who gets to tell England’s story.

Picking up Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems, I was interested but wary. I do love this kind of format for histories, because I think things like poems or fashions or household items and so on can all tell us an astonishing amount about the moments they were made and read, used, etc. But at the same time, “England” and “Englishness” is a bit of a tense concept: witness the English flags being tied to lamp posts and the varied reactions to them, the tensions around how to define Englishness and who belongs in England and — of course, inescapably for me — the tensions between England and other countries it’s ruled, subjugated, etc.

And Clarke handles this well, I think! She explicitly states that it is not a history of Britain, and occasionally calls out the tendency to conflate England with Britain as a geographical or political entity. She discusses the tensions between the Irish/Welsh/Scottish and England, and discusses that in terms of colonialism, because those countries were England’s first colonies. It’s surprisingly rare for someone to recognise that, especially for someone to recognise not just Ireland and Scotland’s issues with England but also the issues for Wales, and I appreciated it a lot. The book feels a bit less strong on the issues between England and the wider world, though it does discuss immigration, Windrush and the Partition of British India towards the end of the book.

The choices of poem are good: not just the canon (though at times it is, or canon-adjacent), and not just higher class voices or male voices. I learned about Mary Leapor, for example, a servant who wrote poetry that was essentially a parody of higher class “country house” poetry, in the same style but about life below-stairs. The poems aren’t all selected for artistic beauty or anything, which is important to know, and it isn’t a history of English poetry (some of the poets aren’t English) — it is a history (non-exhaustive) among many possible histories.

All in all, I would’ve preferred numbered footnotes, and perhaps a little more about the issues of England and colonialism, but I thought the 25 poems chosen did look through some interesting windows at snippets of history, some of which I didn’t already know well. I felt like I learned things, and had a good time; certainly I paused several times to write about the book enthusiastically on Litsy, and looked forward to reading more each time I put it down.

Rating: 5/5 (“loved it”)

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Review – Cat Tales: A History

Posted March 24, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Cat Tales: A History

Cat Tales: A History

by Jerry D. Moore

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 272
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Feared, revered, respected, and beloved, cats have left an indelible paw print on the histories and civilizations of humankind. Over the last two million years, cats and people have interacted in diverse and unexpected ways, but the predecessors of today's furry friends were predators, not pets.

Leading anthropologist Jerry Moore charts the cat's path from deadly enemy to improbable roommate, making use of the latest archaeological evidence to produce an original and revealing narrative. Starting with the terrifying prehistorical scimitar-tooth cat of the Pliocene age and the lion drawings of the Paleolithic Chauvet caverns, Moore journeys through our complicated history with these charismatic creatures. He travels along the Nile and across the Mediterranean, sailing on to South America, exploring pet cemeteries, cat mummies, and exquisite statuary across continents and centuries.

Illustrated throughout with photographs, artifacts, and artworks, this book surveys our relationships with cats from the Paleolithic period to the present day, unlocking the mysteries of these remarkable creatures. While cats are now beloved members of families around the world, our attempts to bring cats in from the cold have not always had happy endings, as Moore explores through such famous feline fanciers as Joe Exotic, Siegfried Fischbacher, and Roy Horn. From incredible archaeological finds to cave paintings, and from classical statues to contemporary social media, Cat Tales surveys ancient and modern interactions between humans and cats, wild and domestic, to ask a simple question: who domesticated who?

Jerry D. Moore’s Cat Tales: a History digs into the origins of humans and how their paths crossed with cats, using mostly archaeological and anthropological evidence. Although he does discuss the domestication of cats (the true domestication that resulted in house cats), there’s quite a focus on big cats as well: hunters, hunted, something in between, “tamed”, etc. Humans have a fascination with big cats that he pretty convincingly shows has been a lasting one.

I did find a couple of anecdotes a bit annoying, since they didn’t actually seem to go anywhere, like one he recounts about a family hiking and being watched by a mountain lion: yes, and? But mostly the archaeological evidence is interesting and the implications are discussed fairly well (and seem to be reasonable, cautious sources).

It’s illustrated by a lot of in-line colour images, which I continue to enjoy as a newly common thing in non-fiction. No more insertions of random colour plates totally divorced from the text!

There are detailed, numbered and well-organised notes on the sources, and an index, so all in all, pretty well-presented and organised. I think it just failed to entirely connect up the dots and talk about the relationship between humans and house cats.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Hadrian’s Wall

Posted March 19, 2026 by Nicky in Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Review – Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian's Wall: Rome and the Limits of Empire

by Adrian Goldsworthy

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 191
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A beautifully produced account of the history and importance of Hadrian's Wall, by a bestselling author and expert on Ancient Rome.

Located at the far-flung and wild edge of the Roman Empire, Hadrian's Wall was constructed by Emperor Hadrian in the 120s AD. Vast in size and stretching from the east to the west coast of the northern part of Britannia, it is the largest monument left by the Roman empire – all the more striking because it lies so far from Rome. Today, it is one of the most visited heritage sites in the country.

Yet the story of the Wall is far more than the development of a line of fortifications and the defence of a troublesome imperial frontier. Generation after generation of soldiers served there, with their families as well as traders and other foreign and local civilians in and around the army bases. The glimpses of this vibrant, multinational community in Adrian Goldsworthy's masterly book bring the bare stones to life.

Goldsworthy also considers why and how the wall was built, and discusses the fascinating history, afterlife and archaeology of this unique ancient monument.

Adrian Goldsworthy’s Hadrian’s Wall is a slim little book that explains what the wall was (and wasn’t), the sequence of use, and some of the archaeology that evidences the things we know (and think we know) about it. There are some photographs, but they’re all in black and white (at least in the paperback edition I have), so it’s a bit muddy and not always easy to see the features in them, though as a non-visual person that doesn’t usually add much anyway.

There was a weird bit in the beginning where he talks about “today’s fashionable hostility to empires”, which was… worrying? But the rest of it was okay, just fairly factual, if essentially pro-Roman in its entire setup (we’re definitely looking at the wall from the Roman side, and not really concerning ourselves with “the Picts”).

I’d say it’s probably a good primer for someone who wants to dig in a little bit, but the book he recommends by David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson is much better if you want a deep dive. At least, I gave that one 4/5 stars, and noted my enjoyment — but I did read it back in 2018, so take that with a pinch of salt.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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