The Roman Empire has been a source of fascination to political thinkers, the obsession of some of the greatest historians, and has influenced art down the ages. Now, in a fresh new take on the era, historian Stuart Laycock sums up the subject in 100 haikus. These original poems are sometimes witty, sometimes sad, sometimes playful, sometime serious, but with only a few syllables to play with they are always concise and to the point. Read them in order for a sense of the vast sweep of Roman history, or dot around and find hidden gems. Power, glory, death, slaughter, murder, ambition, lust, love and triumph. It's all here. Each haiku comes with a brief historical text to accompany it and an evocative original illustration by John Travis.

When we think of Roman Britain we tend to think of a land of togas and richly decorated palaces with Britons happily going about their much improved daily business under the benign gaze of Rome. This image is to a great extent a fiction. In fact, Britons were some of the least enthusiastic members of the Roman Empire. A few adopted roman ways to curry favour with the invaders. A lot never adopted a Roman lifestyle at all and remained unimpressed and riven by deep-seated tribal division. It wasn't until the late third/early fourth century that a small minority of landowners grew fat on the benefits of trade and enjoyed the kind of lifestyle we have been taught to associate with period. Britannia was a far-away province which, whilst useful for some major economic reserves, fast became a costly and troublesome concern for Rome, much like Iraq for the British government today. Huge efforts by the state to control the hearts and minds of the Britons were met with at worst hostile resistance and rebellion, and at best by steadfast indifference. The end of the Roman Empire largely came as 'business as usual' for the vast majority of Britons as they simply hadn't adopted the Roman way of life in the first place.

Piltdown. Even today the name sends a shiver down the collective spine of the scientific community, for this was the most dramatic and daring fraud ever perpetrated upon the world of science and academia. Between 1908 and 1912, a series of amazing discoveries relating to what appeared to be the earliest human were made close to the little village of Piltdown in Sussex. These remains belonged to the developmental 'missing link' between man and ape. The basic principles of evolution, first propounded by Charles Darwin some fifty years before, now appeared as indisputable fact. The Manchester Guardian ran the first headline: 'THE EARLIEST MAN?: REMARKABLE DISCOVERY IN SUSSEX. A SKULL MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD' it screamed, adding that the discovery was 'one of the most important of our time'. The news spread quickly around the world, with many voicing their eagerness to examine the find. Few archaeological discoveries have the capacity to be front-page news twice over, but 'Piltdown Man' is a rare exception. Forty-one years after he first became famous, the 'Earliest Englishman' was again hot news. It was late November 1953, and the world was about to discover that Piltdown Man had been a hoax. Not just any hoax mind, the London Star declared it to be 'THE BIGGEST SCIENTIFIC HOAX OF THE CENTURY'.

A study of the earliest forms of Neolithic monumental architecture based on the author's thesis, with evidence taken from the results of excavations and surveys, published and unpublished material and antiquarian accounts. The evidence is divided into various monument types: horizontal and vertical land cuts, linear mounds, shafts and pits and various ditch and bank enclosures. Russell explains his research agenda, methodology, presents the evidence and questions the functional attributes and classification systems for many of the monuments.

Written in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) purported to chronicle the British monarchy from the arrival of the Trojan Brutus, grandson of Aeneas, through to the seventh century AD. The Historia was a medieval best-seller, and copies spread across the whole of western Europe. It was the first work to outline the story of King Arthur. The Historia has long been dismissed as an unreliable piece of medieval propaganda. A new examination of the text, however, shows that it is very much more than that. Miles Russell explains how individual elements can be traced back to the first century BC, a time when Britain was making first contact with Rome. Geoffrey of Monmouth's skill was to weave these early traditions together with material culled from post-Roman sources in order to create a national epic. In doing so, he also created King Arthur, a composite character whose real origins and context are explained here. This important work establishes Geoffrey of Monmouth as no mere peddler of historical fiction, but as the man who preserved the earliest foundation myths of Britain. It is time to re-evaluate the Historia Regum Britanniaeand shine a new light into the so-called 'Dark Ages'.

Discovered in 1811, Bignor is one of the richest and most impressive villas in Britain, its mosaics ranking among the finest in north-western Europe. Opened to the public for the first time in 1814, the site also represents one of Britain's earliest tourist attractions, remaining in the hands of the same family, the Tuppers, to this day. This book sets out to explain the villa, who built it, when, how it would have been used and what it meant within the context of the Roman province of Britannia. It also sets out to interpret the remains, as they appear today, explaining in detail the meaning of the fine mosaic pavements and describing how the villa was first found and explored and the conservation problems facing the site in the twenty-first century. Now, after 200 years, the remarkable story of Bignor Roman Villa is told in full in this beautifully illustrated book.

Sussex possesses some of the earliest, most important, and most imposing Roman remains found anywhere in Britain. Starting with the first named resident of the county, Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, Great King of Britain (with his palace at Fishbourne) and friend of the Roman emperor Claudius, this book reassesses the story of the Roman invasion of Britain and looks in detail at the earliest examples of Roman culture in Britain. Separate chapters look at the religious and social life of the Romano-Britons in Sussex, as well as their industries, customs, and architecture. Finally there is a fully annotated gazetteer of the best examples of Roman archaeology still visible in the county.