posted on 27 Oct 2024

Totally Chaotic History: Roman Britain gets rowdy by Greg Jenner (with the help of Dr Emma Southon)

Greg Jenner is a public historian, broadcaster and author who is dedicated to the idea of popularising the study of history with the help of humour. He acted as a consultant to the T.V. series of Horrible Histories and in May of this year we were delighted to review the first book in his new series that uncovers what life was really like in those far-off days. That book was called Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly and now he’s back with the next in the series, this time the subject is Roman Britain. 

If you enjoyed your visit to Ancient Egypt then you’ll be happy to hear that this book follows the same recipe as before but this time he’s joined by Dr Emma Southon who is an expert in Roman British history and hosts her own podcast. She’s there to slow Greg down a bit on his helter-skelter ride through Roman British history and to ‘fact check’ some of the text or add detail where it gets complicated – as it does with alarming regularity!

I suspect many of us think we know quite a lot about the Romans in Britain – there’s Hadrian’s Wall, Roman roads, buildings and mosaics in cities like Bath, Julius Ceasar, Boudica – and you’ll find them all mentioned here but not in quite the way you might expect. I would also suspect that most of us have no idea when the Romans were in Britain and when exactly all these things we ‘know’ about actually happened.

Well, stick with this book and all will become much clearer. As with the previous book about Ancient Egypt, there’s a really helpful graphic at the opening of the book that shows us just what a long timeframe we’re talking about – starting before the Roman invasions in 100BCE and ending in 409CE when the armies eventually leave Britain forever.

As is always true when looking back on such far-off historical events, academics often argue over how to interpret the evidence that they have to hand. One of my favourite parts of this book is the ‘Historian Head-To-Head’ where Greg and Emma have an ‘argument’ over the phenomenon of Boudica – what did we really know about her?

Jenner is keen to get his message across that we tend to like our history to be structured and orderly while in real life it’s all much more messy and chaotic. None of us know how future viewers of our own times will see us but what we can know for sure is that we’ve no idea what’s just around the corner while we’re living it.

I’m delighted to say that, as with the book about Ancient Egypt, an added bonus to the book are illustrations done by Rikin Parekh, a graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts and the University of Westminster. The graphic design of the pages makes the whole experience inter-active.

Available now from Walker Books, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will be able to order a copy for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

Terry Potter

October 2024