Reading Hadrian’s Wall: 8

8. Hodgson Hadrian’s Wall on Tyneside TWAM

You have to search hard to find that this colourful and informative booklet is by Nick Hodgson (in tiny text on p.5, if you must know). It is a popular account of the WallQuest project. Regional archaeological societies are dead, long live community archaeology! All nonsense of course, but any money coming into archaeology has to be welcomed, whatever the buzzwords that have to be wielded and diversity-shaped boxes that must be ticked. Everything is an exercise in beating a concept for a project until it resembles the criteria for funding (or is it the other way round?) so all praise to TWAM for making this whole thing work. The full excavation reports will appear in due course, mainly in Archaeologia Aeliana I suspect, but in the interim there is this promptly produced account of the whole thing. Look, mum, somebody is actually digging Hadrian’s Wall, still! Neither Amazon nor Hive stock this (why not?) so you have to buy it direct from TWAM.

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7. Breeze Hadrian’s Wall Paintings by the Richardson Family Donald

This is a book that I repeatedly said to anybody who would listen needed producing (largely because the original paintings are shamefully inaccessible) and now it has been. These are not just pretty views, but important evidence for the state of Hadrian’s Wall in the 19th century. It is sometimes difficult to grasp just how much has been lost in recent years, but this book shows you in a most attractive fashion. It may look like a coffee-table book (if such things still exist), but it is so much more than that. Some of the paintings are so delicate that they verge on the ethereal. I doubt lovers of great art will rate them very highly but I don’t really care what they think and nor should you, because this is a time machine that shows you what was, not what might have been. PLV Bookshop

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10. Breeze Handbook to the Roman Wall SANT

Colloquially known as The Purple Brick, this is less of a field guide than a portable reference book. Everything you could possibly need to know about every inch of Hadrian’s Wall, with a pretty decent introductory section. Its origins lie in Collingwood Bruce’s original Wallet-Book of the Roman Wall: a Guide to Pilgrims Journeying Along the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus from 1863, which became a Hand-book and then (as the Handbook) evolved through several editions (and editors, who gradually – and inevitably: times change – hacked away at the original text and illustrations, each making it it their own). Secondhand editions of old Handbooks are even collected by some murophiles. To modern tastes, the various walking guides (like Mark Richards’, described earlier) are probably better companions (but less likely to be up to the mark factually). True nerds will of course have two Bricks – one for reference at home and a tatty one for taking into the field; the very thought that anybody might not is, frankly, baffling to me. PLV Bookshop

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11. Mothersole Hadrian’s Wall Lane

This rather endearing little book provides a fine contrast to Mark Richards’ guide to walking the Wall and belongs in a tradition of early tourists’ accounts of travelling along Hadrian’s Wall that began with William Hutton. She even gets mentioned in Hingley’s book (No.9), for her pains. Jessie Mothersole was a peripatetic watercolourist and illustrated her own books, which are rather gentle accounts of her journeys (mainly through Roman Britain, Hadrian’s Wall being just one of them). It is Jessie who proves that The Wall Weed in Sycamore Gap is not now in its original position (which was in the small circular stell behind the Wall) and has subsequently crept over to its present vandalising location. You can buy her book if you wish but it is in fact freely available at the Internet Archive if you don’t mind reading online or in an ereader. If you want a dead-tree version (some do), it is best to buy a secondhand copy as the ‘new’ books are all print-on-demand reprints of varying quality and may not render the colour plates in the original and all-important colour.

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9. Hingley Hadrian’s Wall A Life OUP

This book is all about Hadrian’s Wall after the Romans and, as such, has a rather refreshing approach, insofar as it attempts to provide a ‘biography’ of the Wall. Considering it is an academic book, it is also extremely readable (see, I told you it as possible!). If you’ve read Breeze and Dobson and are wondering ‘what next?’ then this is a good place to go. This is fundamentally about the repeated rediscovery of the Wall and takes the account from the post-Roman period right up to the creation of the National Trail and contemporary attitudes to the monument to itself. If your interest is more heritagey than Roman strategy and tactics or bricks (well, stones) and mortar, then this should suit you right down to the ground (and below it, too!). It took the publisher a long time to bring out a reasonably priced paperback, but they eventually did, luckily. No, it’s best not to get me started on the subject of other publishers. PLV Bookshop

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12. Hodgson Hadrian’s Wall Hale

Having started this little sequence with the book you should read, here’s another you ought to, just to savour the contrast. This book is the new boy on the scene and covers much the same ground as the Breeze and Dobson volume, although in a slightly less academic (and arguably more accessible) and colourful format (even so, you have to wonder why Penguin never saw fit to produce a full-colour, coffee-table version of B&D, perhaps using some of northern England’s top-notch photographers to illustrate it). That is not to say the content of the Hodgson book is any less heavyweight. It has the distinct advantage of being much more up-to-date than B&D (last edition 2000) so can incorporate a decade-and-a-half of recent finds, some of which have modified our view of the Wall, and many of which have been down to Hodgson’s work (see No. 8). PLV Bookshop

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6. Rushworth and Croom Segedunum Oxbow

If you are interested in Hadrian’s Wall but have never read an excavation report, you need to do so at least once. Having myself started out co-writing one (Corbridge) and contributing to a second (Housesteads), I vowed never to become involved with the third of the then major English Heritage Wall backlog sites: Wallsend. Reader, I must tell you I failed. I am one of the contributors to Segedunum (I was self-employed by then and needed the money, so sold my soul to the devil and wrote-up the NW corner). An excavation report is a technical report and, as such, is a dance to a particular tune which has to be done in a certain way in order to accomplish its aim: present facts. There must be a structural description (‘layer 2678, sitting over 2679 and butting against 2433, was a maroon loamy sand containing flecks of charcoal and well-preserved fingernail clippings…’ and so on and so forth), specialist reports on the various categories of finds, and then – if you’re very lucky – a guess (or as we call it in the trade ‘perceptive synthesis’) of what all this gobbledygook tells us about the site. It might even have an index, but let’s not get too ambitious here.

Excavation reports are nearly always laughably expensive when they first appear, so here’s a hint. Either get it for free (because you contributed to it or, better still, know some juicy Damoclean tidbit you can hold over the excavator’s head) or wait until it is remaindered by the publisher when it reaches the b*gg*r-this-for-a-game-of-soldiers point of its life and they decide to cut their (inevitable) losses. Few publishers ever have the bright idea of selling them cheap from the start (the Carlisle Millennium reports being a notable exception).

If nothing else, excavation reports are a) A4 in size, b) difficult to read cover-to-cover, and c) truly superb at weighting down the lid of your scanner when that awkward book just won’t sit flat without breaking the spine). If the hardback is too pricey for you, there are ebooks available. PLV Bookshop

Reading Hadrian’s Wall: 1

This is a list of twelve books that for me epitomise Hadrian’s Wall. This is not because I think they are the twelve best books on the subject (although they are certainly not the worst books), but I do feel that they are representative of the whole gamut of good literature on the subject (life is too short to read bad books, so I have not included any of those – and they do exist, trust me). All are easily obtainable; some are hideously pricey, one is completely free.

Archaeological publishing is a funny old world, and one seemingly least understood by archaeological publishers (although they will generally tell you otherwise). There is a tendency to lump books into either the popular (which they feel they can’t charge too much for) or the academic (where they believe they can charge whatever they think they can get away with), although in my experience, readers are far more sophisticated. Popular books try to avoid difficult words or concepts and have ‘further reading’ suggestions, whilst academic ones have foot- or endnotes and feature a ‘bibliography’, but are not renowned for the number of laughs per page. All of which is a shame, as it is completely possible to write an academically sound book that is also accessible and verging on a jolly good read; blame the publishers, not the authors, folks.

If you want to acquire any of the books listed, in each case I have provided a link to the brand spanking new PLV Bookshop which will include several options (including secondhand) for obtaining the books. Let’s get started with the book you must confront for your first literary test per lineam valli (see what I did there?). Pass this, Luke, and the force will indeed be strong in you.

1. Breeze and Dobson Hadrian’s Wall Penguin

Written by David Breeze and the late Brian Dobson, this is the ur-text, the one must-read for all Hadrian’s Wall students. It is sometimes accused of being dry and difficult to read. Now I’ve read some pretty dire books in my life as a reader, writer, and publisher, but this is not one of them. There is also no getting away from the fact that it is the book against which all others will be judged (as you’ll see when we get to No.12) and if you are serious about reading up on the Wall, you must include it. In an age of video games and channel surfing, publishers are often truly terrified that people have in some way devolved from being able to read serious books, and some of the comments on Amazon may be thought to lend weight to that view (but they should not be read without comparing Ben Kane’s short but pithy review of it, also on Amazon). If you really can’t hack it (in which case you’re already sliding down in my estimation) then go straight to No.5, English Heritage’s numpties’ guide to the Wall (also cunningly written by David Breeze, just to show his versatility). PLV Bookshop

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5. Breeze Hadrian’s Wall EH Souvenir Guide English Heritage

This very much does what it says on the tin (to borrow an overworked and inappropriate phrase), although its origins lie in the gentlemanly (but oh-so-real) struggle over the central sector of the Wall between the National Trust and the shape shifting beast that has been the Ministry of Works/Dept of the Environment/ English Heritage (and to some extent Historic England). In 1988, the National Trust (who own much of the old Clayton estate in the central sector) brought out a beautiful, carefully designed and specially photographed colour souvenir to the Wall to sell to visitors. Not to be outdone, the newly created English Heritage hastily threw together a bunch of archive photos with some text by David Breeze to produce a rival publication. By itself it would have been okay, but next to the NT booklet, it all too plainly sucked, but in an endearing way. Now it has evolved into something altogether more attractive and informative, albeit firmly aimed at the lowest common denominator market (like most EH publications, you can almost smell the sweat of the focus groups). PLV Bookshop

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2. Richards Walking Hadrian’s Wall Path Cicerone

If you’re going to walk the Wall you need a good guide book, and Mark Richards’ comes complete with a chunk of Ordnance Survey map to make your task that much easier (the current OS map of the Wall is a cumbersome, badly designed beast, compared to its forebears). The book (which is almost – but not quite – like walking with Mark himself) is a guide to walking the Hadrian’s Wall National Trail, not the actual course of the Wall (the two, you may be surprised to learn, are not necessarily the same thing – in fact for over 12 miles the Trail shyly ignores the Wall) but contains hints on how to get to see most of the the bits you would otherwise miss by sticking to the recommended route. I’ve never been a fan of the official guide to the Trail (which is too much of a ‘product’ dreamed up in a boardroom; basically impractical in the field, it is best treated like an exhibition catalogue and browsed once you get back home) and the alternatives are less appealing (and typographically messier) than the Cicerone book (from a publisher who specialises in walking guides – that gives you a clue to what lies within). Mark has the extra endearing party trick of producing his ‘linescapes’, monochrome drawings of his subject matter, which make a change from endless stock photos of the same bits that you’ll find elsewhere and owe much to his mentor, Alfred Wainwright. Stick this one in your backpack, but make sure it is easily accessible. PLV Bookshop