Colchester boasts 2,000 years of history. Few towns in Britain can
equal that. Yet this new book, by a local author, is the first full
and concise history of Colchester to be published for over half a
century, during which time our knowledge of the town's past has
grown immeasurably. The Iron-Age capital of King Cunobelin
(Shakespeare's Cymbeline), Colchester was the target of the Roman
invasion in AD 43. Where the Emperor Claudius received its
submission, the Romans built a legionary fortress, the framework of
which still forms the centre of Colchester. As capital of Roman
Britain, Colchester was overrun and burnt by the warrior queen
Boudica (aka Boadicea), then rebuilt and ringed by its famous
walls. After Rome fell and the Saxon incursions began, the Saxon
King Edward the Elder made it the leading town in Essex. The
Normans raised its profile higher, when an Abbey, a Priory and a
great castle gave it the strategic defence of Eastern England. It
was besieged only once, when King John was in conflict with his
barons over Magna Carta. For 400 years Colchester's cloth industry
placed it among the top fifteen towns in the kingdom. It saw
Protestants burnt at the stake, withstood a Civil War siege, was
ravaged by plague and stood in the front line against invasion,
first by Napoleon, then by the Kaiser, then by Hitler. An important
engineering town since Victorian times, it is today a regional
shopping centre, a major garrison town and a popular tourist
attraction. This authoritative, readable and well illustrated work,
from a professional historian, will doubtless become the standard
work on this ancient town for at least the next half-century.
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