Roman Britain by David Shotter

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway. 

I picked up this book at a university booksale in Jakarta many years ago; I apparently read it in 2016, though I didn’t realize it until near the end, when I reached the most memorable portion of the book—that which discusses the role of religion in Roman Britain. 

(I’m sure some of the viewers of Raised by Wolves would be interested in that chapter, since it has a discussion of the rivalry between the Mithraic cult and the Christians in that context. Nodens also comes up, which caught my attention.) 

That said, it’s generally pretty dry even for an academic work, and though it’s short, it took me quite some time to find the momentum to get all the way through it, and that’s saying a lot since it’s a book short enough that even I could read it in a single sitting if I had found it more enjoyable. Still, if you want very specific information about the Romanization of Britain, or just want a better sense of the broad strokes, this is probably an invaluable resource. It’s not really for the casual reader, though.