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Book Review

Review of ‘Boudica by Vanessa Collingridge’
It seems to happen like this. I go into bookshops or online, on several occasions, looking for other books, but each time I come face to face with the same book, the one I am not looking for, but which says ‘buy me’, loudly and persistently. And so it was with this one. I think it was mainly down to the eye on the front cover, gazing steadily out from behind the row of Roman soldiers, thoughtful, thought provoking, deep. It made me wonder about this woman, this icon from my primary school days, famous because she was a woman and the one who almost succeeded in wiping the Roman army from the face of ancient Britain.

The book begins with the author, Vanessa Collingridge, deep underground in the basement of a hotel in Colchester, examining a red layer in the earth, ‘flecked with shards of blackened pottery and charcoal.....the last sun that this soil had seen was a faint disk of light through a choking blanket of smoke.....this was the mark of an Iron Age Zorro; this was the destruction layer of Boudica’. And this was the beginning of a book that I could relate to; from page one she had brought Boudica to life.

Never boring, always lively and interesting, the book works chronologically through Boudica’s pre-history, the events that shaped her world: the birth of the Roman Empire, the various attempts to conquer Britain. “Around 300BC, the Greek geographer, Pytheas of Massilia, circumnavigated the island garnering some detailed information about the land and its inhabitants and he recorded its name as The Pretanic Isles after its people, the Pretani – possibly a Celtic word translating as ‘the people who paint themselves’. This was later misspelled by Caesar and others as Britanni or Britannia. But other than Pytheas, few had penetrated much further inland than the coast – and what right-minded Roman would want to? Apparently, the people there were half-men, half-animal so no matter how crammed full the islands were with tin and hides and hunting-dogs, it was not the kind of place you’d choose to visit.” .

This pre-history helps bring alive the Britain in which Boudica lived, and helps us to better understand her by putting her and her country into some kind of context, because there are precious few facts about the woman herself. ‘When we blow the dust off our schoolbook knowledge, it quickly becomes apparent that we know only the headlines about Britain’s most famous warrior queen: here was a Briton who fought the Romans, had some big battles – and then died.....yet the more we pick our way through myth, folklore and other people’s histories to get to the real story of Boudica, the more we realise that the pared-down truth behind the stories has a power and resonance that surpasses even legend.’ And that is what this biography published in 2005 does very successfully by re-examining the facts, looking at the new archaeological discoveries, looking at the evidence we can still see for ourselves today, to bring the legend to life.

Take one of the examples of a living testament to the spirit of the people of that time, something which tells us about them without a word being written or said. In describing the earthworks that form Devils Dyke in Hertfordshire:
‘Two thousand years after its construction, it still has the power to shock both in terms of magnitude and symbolism: here is the work of a seriously powerful people and unlike the inhabitants of Rome who showed their prestige in marble temples, this was a graphic statement expressed by the raw energy of the earth’.
As the author says:

‘At times it might seem as though I’ve taken a detour but it’s always for a reason: sometimes it’s only by taking the “scenic route” that we can get the fresh insight and gather a new understanding that brings history alive. At times, too, we simply do not know what really happened to the characters as the facts were never recorded, or have been lost. All we can do then is suggest the most likely motivation or course of events, based on the best available evidence. My hope is that by taking in the wide panorama, I’ve captured more of the feel of the landscape.’

And so, in attempting to put a heart and a soul into the bare bones we have, we are also frequently encouraged to think about the emotions of the people concerned, because even if we don’t know what they felt, we can imagine, for example, how such servitude under Roman rule would have felt to the diverse tribes of – in the case of the Iceni - fiercely proud warriors. And then finally, after seventeen years of subjugation they have their chance of fighting back, led by their queen. ‘It was no dishonour in being led by a woman, for the queen now heading their army was a link between the earth and the heavens.’

We have no eye-witness account of the final battle, we don’t even know its precise location, but what must it have been like? The author offers her own thoughts:
‘Then, at Boudica’s command the battle horns sounded and the warriors unleashed their fury; one can barely imagine the cacophony that exploded from the Britons as they roared towards the Roman front line with a seismic wave of thundering energy. This was the moment that both sides had feared and lusted after – raw and naked passion against cold, military steel.’
You can almost smell their sweat.

And finally, although the book does not end there, we have no evidence of how she died, the two versions of her death that we do have were written by Roman historians and offer either death by poison, (classic Cleopatra, who is also mentioned in the book) or that she ‘fell ill and died’.

Either could be true, but both seem a bit limp and out of character and possibly are to be expected of a Roman writer who didn’t want to glorify Boudica’s death any more than her life. I (naturally) like the theory offered by the author, that ‘Boudica did not play by Roman rules: as a British warrior queen she may well have chosen to die by the sword.’

‘There is so much that has been lost about this most influential figure from our past – and much of that is lost forever. But there are still whole landscapes of learning that can be explored, and can still throw up treasure in terms of nuggets of understanding. And these may be of more value than any gold torc or royal palace.’

With a little lateral thinking, a little imagination, based on the factual evidence we have, Boudica is brought to life. This book helps us to discover her, takes us back to her time, to her mind-set. And there, just on the periphery of our vision, in the depths of our psyche, in the essence of our being, we will find we know her.

Freda