Victims and/or beneficiaries

‘Roman Britain,’ I asked a friend of mine, a committed pacifist and the veteran of endless marches against the war in Iraq, ‘a Good or Bad Thing?’ ‘Oh, good,’ my friend answered, not even deigning to ponder the question. Startled by the knee-jerk speed of her response, I asked her to explain. ‘Well, the roads, of course. And the baths and the central-heating.’ She paused. ‘And the peace.’

I knew exactly where she was coming from. When I pressed her, it turned out that her hazy sense of Roman Britain derived in large part from a Ladybird book that I too had read when I was young. It was the pictures I chiefly remembered. There was Boadicea, of course, a thrilling dominatrix shaking her spear amid a burning ring of fire; but there was also a fresh-faced Roman governor, the very image of a head boy in a toga, conscientiously building civic amenities for the hairy but by now appreciative Britons.