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

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Readers who take the time to be patient with Hadley's poetical lyrical style of writing should enjoy meandering with him down the Road. 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. This kind of energy to a piece of writing, or a ‘posher than the queen’, deliberately obtuse Brian Sewell quote, always reminds me of the infamous tale recounted in Sir Kenneth Dover’s autobiography where, when walking in the Italian hills, he was so overcome with the beauty and poeticism of the moment that he proceeded to masturbate to completion. He explains how roads initially built by the Romans for military and strategic purposes became economic highways for spreading trade, especially in pottery, and ideas.

I found the author's interpretation of a Boudican war origin for the fort at Great Chesterford of particular interest. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of it; the once mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow-way, a parched mark in the soil. This is no dry and prosaic history, but a work of imagination and a deeply literary book… wonderful prose .Whilst a portion of Hadley’s road appears at start of each new section, a fold out version which showed the entire road in a broader situational context would have been useful. 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. Temporary campaign roads followed, rolling out west towards Rochester and the first major battle at the Medway.

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