There are many books about Boudica, and more continue to appear. Most are bad. This account, by two archaeologists, is a good one, and gives us all that we know for sure about this interesting figure, and all the myths and fantasies which have been built up around her. She was a contemporary of the emperors Claudius and Nero, and led a surprisingly successful British revolt against Roman rule in AD 60–61, that is at the time when St Paul was writing his epistles to the Corinthians and St Mark composed his Gospel.

We have three literary sources for Boudica, two by Tacitus (c AD 56–117). In Agricola, the life of his father-in-law, later Governor of Britain, which was written within living memory of the revolt, Tacitus says that while the then Governor, Suetonius Paulinus, was conquering Anglesey, the oppressed Britons (‘the whole