The Road: A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past

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This book deserves to be read at least twice, first to appreciate what it reveals and then to luxuriate in its effervescent voice. These kind of books just aren’t for me but somehow I find myself pulled in again and again, tricked by good reviews or cursed with a gift I feel obligated to try.

I read through the references, I've bought more books on the subject and I went back and forth between the book and Google Earth at several points. A touchstone into one of the most fascinating periods in British and European history that still has resonance today. His pieces have appeared in The Independent , The Guardian , The Times , London Review of Books , Esquire and his local parish magazine, among many other publications. It’s a meandering journey, journal, essay, something, written with that very specific British wanky-ness that some people just love. Then I became overwhelmed with the micro detail of the local landscape and although many of stories and folklore Hadley draws in are compelling, as a reader I ran out of steam!Readers who take the time to be patient with Hadley's poetical lyrical style of writing should enjoy meandering with him down the Road.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. A bad elevator pitch might have been something like, 'So I have an author who's written a book about a walk along a minor Roman road and a few interesting tales that arise en route.The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report.

Then I realised that the last time I thought much about the subject was when I was at school in the 70s and my brother and I used to play with 1/72nd scale 'Romans and Britons'.A wonderful read which gives you the real sense of being a Roman in Britain, revealing how the world you know around you was shaped by your very ancestors. Thought there'd be more to it, but there are some interesting historical asides here and there, even if, for some reason, I felt it'd be a lot more focused on the attempt to follow a forgotten Roman road than it was. Hadley takes us down a different way, looking through a gentler window on that road's long lost days. We all think we know about Roman roads because they are straight, but this book shows there is far more to them than that. Loving The Road , [it’s] about a Roman road but also a rumination on the past and our relationship with it.

Some of Hadley’s most interesting comments are about ghost roads that no longer exist but which still serve part of their original function - no spoiler.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.