Under Another Sky

Wonderfully written and full of unexpected facts. Higgins brings Roman Britain into the present.

Richard Sennett

Beautifully crafted… The beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and the precision with which she skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy that she shows for the myth-makers, the men and woman who so very much wanted their very own Roman Britain.

Peter Stothard, The Times

Mesmerising… Sophisticated and passionate. She personalizes the story in a diaristic, almost poetic tone…her prose reminds me at times of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn…similarly haunted by a sense of a past slipping away.

Tim Whitmarsh, Guardian

Smart and up-to-date, sensitive but hard-headed, impeccably researched but gloriously poetic. The layering of themes, moods and topics is staggering. There's nothing like quite it.

Tom Holland, author of 'Rubicon' and 'Persian Fire'

Under Another Sky should be on every shelf in the UK. Part travelogue, part handbook and part revisionist history, it is a personal and vivid encounter with landscapes, artefacts and people… Beautifully considered and written.

Ruth Padel, New Statesman

A delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... Under Another Sky is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors.

Christopher Hart, Sunday Times

In her gentle, fine prose, [Higgins] suggests convincingly that Britain was thoroughly changed by its two Roman invasions, and that modern Britain is still built on a Roman skeleton.

Harry Mount, Daily Telegraph

Charming, intriguing and not-infrequently elegiac... What is most impressive here, rather than either the erudition of the endeavour, is simply the writing.

Stuart Kelly, Scotsman

Charlotte Higgins looks at what Roman Britain meant to those who, from medieval mythographer Geoffrey of Monmouth to W.H. Auden, subsequently thought about it.

David Robinson, Scotsman

Lyrical, haunting look at Roman Britain and its echo in our culture.

Sunday Times

Delightful... There is much here to inform and amuse.

Richard Hobbs, Evening Standard

Part travelogue, part history, part archaeology, this multi-faceted book seeks out what is familiar – and what is not… This is an enriching and eclectic book.

Ross Leckie, Country Life

A thoughtful and entertaining reminder that, long before the Anglo-Saxons, the Romans gave an identity to "a land as ferocious as its people".

Simon J V Malloch, Literary Review

It’s a compelling travelogue and Higgins’s passion for discovery shines out.

Emerald Street

[She] is witty, rangy, unapologetically goofy and erudite at once.

Lorin Stein, Paris Review

This book will be of interest to those who want to see and learn more about a significant period in British history.

UK Regional Press

Higgins wears her considerable erudition lightly and nimbly hops between her knowledge of the classics and the changing perception of the ancients by the British of the past few centuries.

Ben Felsenburg, Metro

A very personal encounter with Roman Britain… Invites us to see our landscape and history as the Romans first imagined and wrote about them – strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world.

UK Regional Press

[Higgins] is as sharp and sensitive an observer of the latest version of Britannia as she is of the earliest one… Each chapter is not just a regional itinerary but also a brilliantly constructed and often exhilaratingly poetic treatment of wider themes.

Emily Gowers, Times Literary Supplement

Records [Higgins’] own travels around the island in search of Roman traces. She includes plenty of anecdotes about the continuing fascination with the Roman past and its penetration of the present.

Oldie

Higgins produced another remarkable British travelogue… that was at once thoughtful, learned, witty and superbly written.

William Dalrymple, Observer

Filled with passion and personal interest… Higgins walks us around the landscape of this country as it would have been 2,000 years ago, and in doing so she ably captures the spirit of Britain now, Britain then and Britain in between.

Dan Jones, Telegraph

Whether at Hadrian’s Wall or in a car park in the City, she [Higgins] shows how Roman traces are woven through British life.

Financial Times

A fascinating look at how we have viewed Rome's presence in these islands and what a debt we still owe to Roman achievements.

Good Book Guide

Part history, part travelogue, [Higgins] also brings to life the eccentric archaeologists who have tried to recapture that lost civilisation.

Robbie Millen, The Times

A fresh and readable account

Fachtna Kelly, Sunday Business Post

Under Another Sky is not only a work of personal history, it is more personal than that... It is conversational, anecdotal, in a way that makes it easy for [Higgins] to slip in quite a lot of information

Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

A delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... The result is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors

Christopher Hart, Sunday Times

The beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and in the precision with which [Higgins] skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy she shows for the myth-makers.

Peter Stothard, The Times

Evocative...a keen-eyed tour of Britain.

Christopher Hirst, Independent

Packed with fascinating and thought-provoking insights.

Herald

A captivating travelogue.

Helena Gumley-Mason, Lady

A delightfully heady and beautifully written potpourri of a book.

BBC History Magazine

A fascinating look at the debt we owe to Roman achievements

Good Book Guide