BOADICEA By Lewis Spence In his opening chapter Mr. Spence
sets out the few facts recorded by Tacitus and Dio concerning Boadicea's revolt against the Romans in the year 61. The rest of a long book (Robert Hale, i2s. 6d.) is an elaborate commentary on those facts, in which Mr. Spence has made good use of recent archaeological work in East Anglia .. and London, though at the same time, he cannot bring himself to discard.the.picturesque inventions of a pre-scientific age like Spelman's Icenia or the fraudulent Richard of Cirencester. The mixture of good and bad evidence is unsatisfactory. Yet when the author at last reaches the campaign in which Boadicea burnt Colchester and London and destroyed the 9th Legion front Lincoln, he describes it plausibly, with detail which the diggings . have provided. Mr. Spence indulges himself in a final bout of conjecture about the site of the battle in which Suetonius annihilated the Britons. It was, he thinks, fought on or near the site of King's Cross station.
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