The Romans In Britain

Episode

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

Becoming Roman

20101024

20110824 (R3)

Historian Bettany Hughes looks at our first contacts with the Romans and how people loved or resented their new overlords. Our relationship with the Romans used to be a cosy one - once we saw them as our fellow imperialists who civilised 'us natives', and a jolly good thing too. Even now that some of that 'special relationship' has persisted. We love discoveries of forts and towns and baths, and we're lot less impressed by a nice British round house. Yet perhaps 97% of our ancestors would have been living in those roundhouses, many of them turning up their noses at Roman culture beyond the odd bit of bracelet or pottery.

Where we do pay attention to the native British, it's to the freedom fighters like Boudicca and Caractacus, but we rarely think about ordinary life under occupation or the culture shock of suddenly finding yourself living in a Roman town. Roman towns would have looked as alien to our ancestors as the dizzying streetscapes of Bladerunner with their tall rectangular stone buildings, cacophony of languages and intimidatingly foreign way of life.

Nor do we think about the most important woman in early Roman Britain, the dazzling ruler of most of Yorkshire - the pro-Roman Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes who built one of our largest prehistoric sites at Stanwick and who caused an international incident when she ditched her husband for his armour bearer. Her canny but failed experiment in client state-building would set the future for the whole of the North of England. She was a much bigger player than Boudicca. It's up in the North that we see occupation in shockingly modern terms, as those enormous Roman armies set up permanent home, sucking the local areas almost dry and becoming the law of the land. Up here, occupation bites.

Bettany Hughes considers how much people loved or resented the Romans during occupation.

The Birth Of The Britons

20101031

20110826 (R3)

Historian Bettany Hughes investigates the shocking dislocation of the end of Roman rule in Britain. Traditionally it's said that Roman rule ended in the year 410: 1600 years ago, when the Roman emperor Honorius supposedly told us to fend for ourselves, but it's much more complicated than that. Britain became embroiled in a series of revolts by imperial usurpers which weren't so much 'Romans Go Home' but 'Emperor come here!' and it all went very badly wrong.

It's hard to imagine London closing for business, becoming a ghost town whose citizens have fled, with a choice of growing their own veg in the countryside or becoming bully boys for a local war leader, but that's exactly what happened when Roman rule collapsed in Britain. Londoners left strange thank-you gifts for the gods as they closed the city down - like the Draper's Lane hoard of copper pots and sacrifices, which we'll be investigating.

The usurper emperors accidentally brought a systems collapse to tipping point. In the maelstrom that followed, pagan Anglo Saxons who'd originally been Roman mercenaries were joined by new immigrants from their Germanic homelands and a lot of eastern Romano-Brits decided that they were the future, while others desperately clung to their Roman Christian ways. But in Wales, Cornwall and Devon, they looked aghast at this barbarism. An early form of devolution, and a boost in local power (legend says from the rebel emperor Magnus Maximus), led the West to hold on proudly to their Roman identity, fending off Saxons and assimilated Saxon 'wannabes' all the way till the medieval campaigns of Edward I. Edward might have thought of himself as the true heir of Rome but to the Welsh he was nothing more than the last barbarian.

Historian Bettany Hughes investigates the end of Roman rule in Britain.

Episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
01	Becoming Roman	20101024	20110824 (R3)	Historian Bettany Hughes looks at our first contacts with the Romans and how people loved or resented their new overlords. Our relationship with the Romans used to be a cosy one - once we saw them as our fellow imperialists who civilised 'us natives', and a jolly good thing too. Even now that some of that 'special relationship' has persisted. We love discoveries of forts and towns and baths, and we're lot less impressed by a nice British round house. Yet perhaps 97% of our ancestors would have been living in those roundhouses, many of them turning up their noses at Roman culture beyond the odd bit of bracelet or pottery. Where we do pay attention to the native British, it's to the freedom fighters like Boudicca and Caractacus, but we rarely think about ordinary life under occupation or the culture shock of suddenly finding yourself living in a Roman town. Roman towns would have looked as alien to our ancestors as the dizzying streetscapes of Bladerunner with their tall rectangular stone buildings, cacophony of languages and intimidatingly foreign way of life. Nor do we think about the most important woman in early Roman Britain, the dazzling ruler of most of Yorkshire - the pro-Roman Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes who built one of our largest prehistoric sites at Stanwick and who caused an international incident when she ditched her husband for his armour bearer. Her canny but failed experiment in client state-building would set the future for the whole of the North of England. She was a much bigger player than Boudicca. It's up in the North that we see occupation in shockingly modern terms, as those enormous Roman armies set up permanent home, sucking the local areas almost dry and becoming the law of the land. Up here, occupation bites. Bettany Hughes considers how much people loved or resented the Romans during occupation.
02	The Birth Of The Britons	20101031	20110826 (R3)	Historian Bettany Hughes investigates the shocking dislocation of the end of Roman rule in Britain. Traditionally it's said that Roman rule ended in the year 410: 1600 years ago, when the Roman emperor Honorius supposedly told us to fend for ourselves, but it's much more complicated than that. Britain became embroiled in a series of revolts by imperial usurpers which weren't so much 'Romans Go Home' but 'Emperor come here!' and it all went very badly wrong. It's hard to imagine London closing for business, becoming a ghost town whose citizens have fled, with a choice of growing their own veg in the countryside or becoming bully boys for a local war leader, but that's exactly what happened when Roman rule collapsed in Britain. Londoners left strange thank-you gifts for the gods as they closed the city down - like the Draper's Lane hoard of copper pots and sacrifices, which we'll be investigating. The usurper emperors accidentally brought a systems collapse to tipping point. In the maelstrom that followed, pagan Anglo Saxons who'd originally been Roman mercenaries were joined by new immigrants from their Germanic homelands and a lot of eastern Romano-Brits decided that they were the future, while others desperately clung to their Roman Christian ways. But in Wales, Cornwall and Devon, they looked aghast at this barbarism. An early form of devolution, and a boost in local power (legend says from the rebel emperor Magnus Maximus), led the West to hold on proudly to their Roman identity, fending off Saxons and assimilated Saxon 'wannabes' all the way till the medieval campaigns of Edward I. Edward might have thought of himself as the true heir of Rome but to the Welsh he was nothing more than the last barbarian. Historian Bettany Hughes investigates the end of Roman rule in Britain.