After Britannia (A Journey Along Hadrian's Wall)

This story both begins and ends in the shadow of Hadrian's Wall, the largest Roman monument in Britain. Historian Alistair Moffat leads readers on a journey through ancient texts, tales, and novels that have shaped understandings around the rise of England, Scotland, and Wales. This narrative examines the province once known as Britannia—a name given by the Romans to the island of Great Britain—made up of a civilization not obliterated by centuries of migration and conquest, and certainly not forgotten.

Beginning at Jarrow, near the mouth of the River Tyne, at the monastery where Bede, the first scholarly British historian, wrote the magisterial, definitive Ecclesiastical History of the English People in the early eighth century, readers travel westward along the length of the Wall. In its tumbledown forts and ruins, a new and unexpected story of Rome, Britain, and Scotland is revealed. A journey along old roads reveals old perspectives. Weaving together history, archaeology, and folklore, Moffat, in his own inimitable style, unearths a new history of Scotland and Northern England.

Dispelling contemporary myths of the Roman Empire, the English race, and the formation of Great Britain, After Britannia transports readers back in time through vivid descriptions of the seventy-three-mile-long wall, backed by Roman legend and foundational accounts by British historians. It is a perfect primer for the millions of people who walk Hadrian’s Wall each year, complemented by Moffat’s sensory observations from his own travels to the site.