Caesar came to Britain in 55 and 54 BC but didn't try to complete a conquest of the island. Claudius and his legions arrived in AD 43. This time they were serious, and forty years later almost the whole of southern Britain was under Roman control, where they stayed until the final decline of the empire and the weakness of the colony's defences and the internecine quarrels of Roman generals brought the experiment to an end.

Piecing together evidence from the often-propagandistic Roman literary sources – the writings of Caesar, Tacitus, Livy and others – and making brilliant use of archaeological and anthropological research, Addis paints a vivid portrait of both Roman and British life in prehistoric times and in the first century of our era. He brings the violence and factional intrigues of British tribal life into vivid relief but also evokes the ways in which these diverse peoples lived, their monumental burial sites, their customs, their trade in tin and gold with continental Europe, their military organization and the kind of war they practiced. And he gives us a panoramic view of the deep history of the island that the Romans set out to conquer.