Echolands: A Journey in Search of Boudica

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He states that he wants to achieve a ‘sense of immediacy’ between the ancient past and the present, akin to that which can be found through film; a sense of the ‘past happening before our eyes’. With such visions in mind, the conflagration that consumed the temple burns all the more brightly down the ages. Similarly, the Temple of Claudius, built at some point between ad 49 and 60, and later incorporated by the Normans into Colchester Castle. An engaged, informed companion for the armchair time traveller…captures the thrill and the difficulties of interpreting the past’.

History Today Boudica Lite | History Today

While we do spend a lot of time in East Anglia, we also journey from the banks of the Thames in London to Anglesey and Lincolnshire. I am still a little confused about the book’s point, but I have learned quite a lot about Duncan Mackay. The passage of two millennia has buried the world that Boudica knew, but Duncan finds that its echoes and physical traces still surround us - as long as you know where to look. Beginning near his home in Norfolk, in the heart of Boudica's tribal territory, he embarks on a journey in the footsteps of Romans and Britons, exploring their villages, towns, forts and roads. Mackay’s speculation that many of Camulodunum’s citizens would have fled to the temple to escape – in vain – the wrath of the Britons, is conjured in detail.The places that Mackay visits, traverses and dwells in are vividly described as a conscious attempt to revive the past as lived experience.

Echolands by Duncan Mackay | Hachette UK

According to the biographical blurb, Mackay lives in Norfolk, so there is an element of proximity and convenience that is rather too obvious. Duncan has written a masterpiece - a journey and an investigation that fuses landscape and history, chasing the echoes of Boudica's rebellion and finding its physical traces that still surround us today. He believes that every place, indoors or out, urban, rural or wild, has its own link with the past, and a unique tale to tell. The site of Boudica’s last battle was long believed be lost to time, but the threads of the story all pull towards one remarkable, forgotten little corner of the English landscape. Pompeii could not give us anything more captivating than this battered, aged scrap of soft furnishing, which may or may not have been the spot some poor Roman spent their last night on earth.He lives in Norfolk with his wife, son and soppy Black Labrador, indulging his passion for walking marshes and deserted beaches, and hurling himself into freezing rivers at dawn. An original, revelatory, enthralling narrative history of how Queen Boudica led the greatest rebellion Britain has ever seen. Martha Vandrei is the author of Queen Boudica and Historical Culture in Britain: An Image of Truth (Oxford University Press, 2018). We lose some wonder and nuance in this retelling, and even more so as it is further refracted through the most limiting lens of all: the self.