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 | In Our Time
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 |  |  | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds in the world. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |  |  |  |  | LISTEN AGAIN  |  |  | |
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|  |  |  | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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 |  |  | ROMANS IN BRITAIN
About 2000 years ago, Tacitus noted that “the climate is wretched”, Herodian said, “the atmosphere in the country is always gloomy”, Dio said “they live in tents unclothed and unshod, and share their women” and the historian Strabo said on no account should the Romans make it part of the Empire because it will never pay its way. But invade they did, and Britain became part of the Roman Empire for almost four hundred years.
But what brought Romans to Britain and what made them stay? Did they prove the commentators wrong and make Britain amount to something in the Empire? Did the Romans come and go without much trace, or do those four centuries still colour our national life and character today?
Contributors
Greg Woolf, Professor of Ancient History at St Andrews University
Mary Beard, Reader in Classics at Cambridge University
Catharine Edwards, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, London University
|  |  |  RELATED LINKS
Radio 4's The Roman Way
Vindolanda exhibition at Hadrian's Wall BBC History - Roman Britain
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