Magnus Magnusson on a fresh look at the past
Journalistic books are much in vogue nowadays — a throwback to the heyday of the academic journalists, or journalist academics, like Andrew Lang at the end of the nineteenth century. And when the journalist is as distinguished and stylish as Hunter Davies, it's a welcome vogue.* Hadrian's Wall is Mr Davies's subject this time: an account of a series of walks he made along the seventy-three miles of the original line of the great Roman rampart that stretched across the neck of England from Wallsend on Tyne to Bowness on Solway. An amiable, chatty book: Mr Davies with his gleaming curiosity and observant eye makes a good companion as he ambles the length of the wall, darting off on tangents, noting a shop in Corbridge that sold "Almost Unwearoutable Socks" (and of course dropping in to find out more), recording the wariness with which he was frequently regarded by local workmen and farmers, sharing his enthusiasm for the finer sites and candidly expressing his disappointment with the standards of display and accommodation at all too many others. It's not a guided tour of the Wall; rather, it's an appreciation of the Wall. Mr Davies had taken a somewhat disinterested course in Roman British archaeology at Durham University, and found the subject incredibly boring, he tells us; but over the years he has come to appreciate that the Wall is a living thing still, and in his book he has a double purpose: to indicate what life was like for the people, soldiers and civilians, who inhabited the area of the Wall in Roman times, and to report on the life that goes on there today — the archaeologists, landowners, farmers and industrial workers strung together by the common identity of the Wall.
He has read up on all the latest archaeological lore, which he presents with due diffidence, undogmatically. There is a certain thinness about the historical background — during the revolt of the Iceni under " Boadicea " it was Colchester, rather than London, that was recaptured from the Romans (London only became the capital after the massacre at Colchester had revealed how vulnerable a place it was); and anyway I rather hoped that Mr Davies would lend support to the correct form " Boudicca " for "Boadicea." And there is a tendency to be patronising, Roman fashion, about the native North Britons and Caledonians who were there before the Romans came. There is also a tendency, implicitly, to present the Wall as a medieval rampart which the barbarians feared to storm, lest they be repulsed by defenders, rather than as a kind of frontier control like the Berlin Wall.
But Mr Davies has been well schooled in the views of the Birleys, pere et fits (Professor Eric Birley and his son, Robin Birley, who runs the Vindolanda Trust with its ambitious programme of educational excavation and reconstruction). And he commends Robin Birley's vigorous rejection of the concept that military duty on the Wall was the equivalent of being sent to Siberia, and must have been hateful to the soft-living Italians used to sunnier climes. In the first place most of the units were recruited in northern Europe; and in the second place, excavation of the vicus (village) at Vindolanda and elsewhere has revealed that they enjoyed many amenities, including orgies in the local baths which the Romans introduced everywhere (just as the English introduced cricket wherever they went, as Mr Davies points out—each to his own fetish).
But it is the present-day life of the Wall that I found the most interesting area of the book. Here the journalist comes into his own. He is sharp about the dismalness of some departmental museums (especially the one at the site of Corstopitum at Corbridge — "ghastly charnel-houses of murdered evidence" as Sir Flinders Petrie once called museums). He is very acute and funny about a Medieval Banquet at Langley Castle, which should have been repulsive but turned out to have a brash vigour of its own, like Butlin's, that he couldn't help enjoying.
It is in his interviewing of the people of the Wall that Mr Davies is at his best: dispassionate, letting people speak for themselves. From this emerges an impressive picture of
the different attitudes that people have, ttte way in which their interests conflict. Roble Birley makes a persuasive case for more cavation on educational grounds, and the need for proper tourist facilities, includgli car-parks and the like, and the need !at three-dimensional reconstruction of a sectior of the wall, and perhaps even a fort, so that visitors can really get the feel of what the Wall was like. This is a view I share who heartedly: no layman (and I suspect f.e"
archaeologists) can have any idea of the Ira; mensity of the Wall from the reduced stone.' that remain, nor can he easily imagine life le
the fort without being able to enter the
Roman buildings in full scale, rather thaa, eyeing a few courses of masonry neat° topped by departmental turf.
At the same time, we are presented with tit! vigorous views of a man who is, on the face °. It, anti-Wall, but is simply interested in P,r,°., teeth-1g the rights of neighbouring farmers. PI; name is Ted Woodman, the farmer of Gres' Chesters, whose farmhouse is built inside fort. He is a local councillor. He feels that oc, much attention is paid to preserving all an', any bits of the Wall, at the expense of lo, farmers whose land is damaged bY discriminate tourism. He fought tooth andila'0 against a proposal to site an access road Vindolanda past a farmhouse, and seemed be echoing there an ingrained local reseniti ment of archaeological activities on the WI', What of the ugly quarry at Cawfielo;i where Northumberland County Counc.,1 planned to spend £50,000 creating an artifici'f' lake and landscape gardens? Counci!1°1 Woodman's attitude had a certain logtc3, consistency — if the department hadte stopped the quarrying when it reached W. line of the wall, it would have flattened tb,! whole area, Wall and all, and there aT0a,1,1 have been no unsightly chasm in the because there wouldn't have been a hillsiel lefItl It isn't often that a book about a rna-Pr. monument of antiquity takes the troubles look at the reverse of the coin. All credit to, Davies. But then, this is an unusual book. only complaint is that there are very photographs — for £3.50 one could reasonau% have expected more. But this is a inttl; complaint. I think a great number of peol) are going to find much enjoyment art illumination in this book. I certainly did.
Magnus Magnusson lives in Scotland and presents the BBC television programInt Chronicle.
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