The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

Travelling from London northwards to York, Christopher Hadley traces England’s great Roman road, the Ermine way, through its history.
Two thousand years in the making, this journey packs together a miscellany of histories and stories anchored to the Ermine way, a road no longer visible but seared through British history.

In a grand detective story, Hadley traces the road from its origins, built by Roman legionaries in the months after Queen Boudicca’s revolt, through red herrings and bread crumb trails, ambitious forged documents that sought to twist history and modern attempts to pin down the facts.

In a glorious amalgam of archaeology, folklore, historiography and local history’s deep mysteries, we are always looking for more than just the path beneath our feet. Hadley helps us discover a curious and compulsive history of how Britain has found its way since the Romans.