Franklin Watts ISBN 9781445157306 £12.99
The “time travel” format in this series is an exciting one for youngsters, and gets to the heart of why we develop an interest in the past: how were people different or the same as us in the all that time ago? The trip to Londinium is nicely set out here and the idea of being a tourist in the ancient town is again interest grabbing. I really like the approachable presentation and cartoon style of drawing, and each tableau as it unfolds on turning the page can be explored visually for the activities of various characters before going more in-depth with the text. The text conveys a lot of information, again in an approachable and amusing style, and the balance between image and information is good. There is some attempt here to distinguish between the relatively few actual “Romans” in Roman Britain and the rest of the population, but it seems unfortunate that people and things are still often referred to under the blanket term “Roman”. The term ‘Romano-British’ often seems to be eschewed as overcomplicated in public and educational outputs. My hope is that one day we can solve this didactic problem, even for the youngest scholars, as the real interest in Britannia, and the subject of most study of it over the last 30 years, is that the province was a very particular version of Romanitas, perhaps more Gallo-Roman in many respects than “Roman” per se.
Jake Weekes