英國史第一集：beginnings（3100 B.C.——1000 A.D.）

[00:09.35]From its earliest days, Britain was an object of desire. [00:14.21] [00:25.79]Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae" - worth the conquest, [00:31.34] [00:31.51]the best compliment that could occur to a Roman. [00:35.29] [00:36.59]He had never visited these shores [00:39.15] [00:39.31]but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold. [00:44.22] [00:46.39]Silver was abundant too. Apparently so were pearls, [00:50.09] [00:50.27]though Tacitus had heard they were grey, [00:52.78] [00:52.95]like the overcast, rain-heavy skies, [00:55.90] [00:56.07]and the natives only collected them when cast up on the shore. [01:00.62] [01:03.23]As far as the Roman historians were concerned, [01:06.10] [01:06.27]Britannia may be off at the edge of the world, [01:09.02] [01:09.19]but it was off the edge of their world, not in a barbarian wilderness. [01:14.46] [01:14.63]If those writers had been able to travel in time as well as space [01:18.86] [01:19.03]to the northernmost of our islands, the Orcades - our modern Orkney - [01:23.66] [01:23.83]they would have seen something much more astonishing than pearls: [01:28.10] [01:28.27]Signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome. [01:34.18] [02:22.83]There are remains of Stone Age life all over Britain and Ireland. [02:27.50] [02:29.31]But nowhere as abundantly as Orkney, with its mounds, graves [02:33.58] [02:33.75]and its great circles of standing stones like here at Brodgar. [02:38.58] [02:38.75]Vast, imposing and utterly unknowable. [02:42.53] [02:46.11]Orkney has another Neolithic site, even more impressive than Brodgar, [02:52.66] [02:52.83]the last thing you would expect from the Stone Age, [02:55.66] [02:55.83]a shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient domestic life. [02:59.94] [03:00.31]Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island, [03:03.58] [03:03.75]a village called Skara Brae. [03:06.78] [03:15.07]Beneath an area no bigger than the 18th green of a golf course [03:19.46] [03:19.63]lies Europe's most complete Neolithic community, [03:23.58] [03:23.75]preserved for 5,000 years under a blanket of sand and grass [03:29.22] [03:29.39]until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm. [03:33.90] [03:44.31]This is a recognisable village. [03:46.90] [03:47.07]Neatly fitted into its landscape between pasture and sea, [03:51.70] [03:51.87]intimate, domestic and self-sufficient. [03:55.10] [03:55.27]Technically still the Stone Age and Neolithic period, [03:59.18] [03:59.35]these are not huts, they're true houses, [04:02.02] [04:02.19]built from sandstone slabs that lie all around the island [04:05.89] [04:06.07]and gave stout protection to villagers at Skara Brae, [04:09.94] [04:10.11]from their biting Orcadian winds. [04:13.22] [04:16.59]They were real neighbours, living cheek by jowl, [04:20.90] [04:21.07]their houses connected by walled, sometimes decorated alleyways. [04:24.98] [04:25.15]It is easy to imagine gossip travelling down those alleys [04:29.94] [04:30.11]after a hearty seafood supper. [04:32.98] [04:36.15]We have everything you could want from a village [04:40.10] [04:40.27]except a church and a pub. [04:42.65] [04:45.79]In 3,000 BC, the sea and air were warmer than they are now. [04:50.81] [04:51.35]Once they'd settled in their sandstone houses, [04:54.62] [04:54.79]they could harvest red bream and mussels and oysters [04:58.10] [04:58.27]that were abundant in the shallows. [05:01.02] [05:14.11]Cattle gave meat and milk and dogs were kept [05:16.54] [05:16.71]for hunting and for company. [05:18.86] [05:19.03]In Neolithic times there would have been a dozen houses, [05:22.90] [05:23.07]half-dug into the ground for comfort and safety. [05:27.34] [05:27.51]A thriving, bustling little community of 50 or 60. [05:31.94] [05:34.59]The real miracle of Skara Brae [05:37.05] [05:37.23]is that these houses were not mere shelters. [05:40.42] [05:40.59]They were built by people who had culture, who had style. [05:45.58] [05:47.79]Here's where they showed off that style. [05:50.86] [05:51.03]A fully equipped, all-purpose Neolithic living room, [05:54.90] [05:55.07]complete with luxuries and necessities. [05:57.94] [05:58.11]Necessities? Well, at the centre, a hearth, [06:01.81] [06:01.99]around which they warmed themselves and cooked. [06:05.58] [06:09.11]A stone tank in which to keep live fish bait. [06:12.42] [06:17.99]Some houses had drains underneath them, [06:21.69] [06:21.87]so they must have had, believe it or not, indoor toilets. [06:25.62] [06:25.79]Luxuries? The orthopaedically correct stone bed [06:30.34] [06:30.51]may not seem particularly luxurious, [06:32.66] [06:32.83]but the addition of heather and straw [06:35.58] [06:35.75]would have softened the sleeping surface [06:38.31] [06:38.47]and would have made this bed seem rather snug. [06:42.09] [06:44.15]At the centre of it all was this spectacular dresser [06:47.93] [06:48.11]on which our house-proud villagers would set out [06:52.02] [06:52.19]all their most precious stuff. [06:54.86] [06:57.43]Fine bone and ivory necklaces, beautifully carved stone objects, [07:03.30] [07:03.47]everything designed to make a grand interior statement. [07:08.26] [07:33.43]Given the rudimentary nature of their tools, [07:36.42] [07:36.59]it would have taken countless man hours to build [07:39.74] [07:39.91]not only these dwellings but the great circles of stone [07:44.06] [07:44.23]where they would have gathered to worship. [07:46.79] [07:46.95]Skara Brae wasn't just an isolated settlement of fishers and farmers. [07:53.26] [07:53.43]Its people must have belonged to some larger society, [07:56.46] [07:56.63]one sophisticated enough to mobilise the army [07:59.74] [07:59.91]of toilers and craftsmen needed, not just to make these monuments, [08:04.30] [08:04.47]but to stand them on end. [08:06.58] [08:06.75]They were just as concerned about housing the dead as the living. [08:12.02] [08:13.11]The mausoleum at Maes Howe, a couple of miles from Skara Brae, [08:17.74] [08:17.91]seems no more than a swelling on the grassy landscape. [08:21.78] [08:21.95]This is, as it were, a British pyramid [08:24.51] [08:24.67]and in keeping with our taste for understatement, [08:27.46] [08:27.63]it reserves all its impact for the interior. [08:30.86] [08:34.31]Imagine them open once more. [08:36.54] [08:36.71]A detail from a village given the job of pulling back the stone seals, [08:41.57] [08:41.75]lugging the body through the low opening in the earth. [08:45.22] [08:45.39]Up 36 feet of narrow, tight-fitting passageway, [08:50.18] [08:50.35]lit only once a year by the rays of the winter solstice. [08:54.58] [08:54.75]A death canal, constriction, smelling of the underworld. [09:00.22] [09:15.31]Finally the passageway opens up to this stupendous, [09:19.01] [09:19.19]high-vaulted masonry chamber. [09:21.65] [09:22.15]Some tombs would have been elaborately decorated [09:25.26] [09:25.43]with carvings in the form of circles or spirals, [09:28.97] [09:29.15]like waves or the breeze-pushed clouds. [09:32.30] [09:32.47]Others would have had neat stone stores or cubicles [09:36.46] [09:36.63]where the bodies would be laid out on shelves. [09:39.78] [09:44.39]The grandest tombs had openings cut in the wall, [09:48.01] [09:48.19]to create side chambers where the most important bodies [09:51.30] [09:51.47]could be laid out in aristocratic spaciousness [09:54.98] [09:55.15]like family vaults in a country church. [09:58.10] [10:01.99]Unlike medieval knights, these grandees [10:05.58] [10:05.75]were buried with eagles and dogs, or even treasure. [10:09.66] [10:09.83]The kind of thing the Vikings who broke into these tombs [10:12.94] [10:13.11]thousands of years later were quick to filch. [10:16.50] [10:19.43]In return, these early tomb raiders left their own legacy. [10:24.18] [10:24.35]These wonderful graffiti. [10:26.94] [10:27.47]These runes were carved by the most skilled rune carver [10:30.94] [10:31.11]in the western ocean. [10:33.10] [10:33.27]I bedded Thorny here. [10:35.42] [10:36.51]Ingegirth is one horny bitch. [10:40.18] [10:46.43]As for the Orcadian hoi polloi, [10:49.18] [10:49.35]they ranked space in a common chamber, on a floor carpeted [10:54.06] [10:54.23]with the bones of hundreds of their predecessors. [10:57.66] [10:57.83]A crowded waiting room to their afterworld. [11:01.94] [11:11.87]For centuries, life at Skara Brae must have continued in much the same way. [11:17.46] [11:17.63]Around 2,500 BC, the climate seems to have got colder and wetter. [11:24.74] [11:24.91]The red bream and stable environment [11:28.34] [11:28.51]the Orcadians had enjoyed for countless generations disappeared. [11:32.74] [11:32.91]Fields were abandoned, the farmers and fishers migrated, [11:36.82] [11:36.99]leaving their stone buildings and tombs [11:39.58] [11:39.75]to be covered by layers of peat, drifting sand and finally grass. [11:45.38] [11:48.11]The mainland too, of course, had its burial chambers, [11:52.22] [11:52.39]like the long barrow at West Kennet. [11:55.30] [12:04.23]There were also the great stone circles, the largest at Avebury. [12:09.78] [12:12.51]But the most spectacular of all at Stonehenge. [12:17.22] [12:22.47]By 1,000 BC, things were changing fast. [12:26.86] [12:27.03]All over the British landscape, [12:29.10] [12:29.27]a protracted struggle for good land was taking place. [12:32.54] [12:32.71]Forests were cleared so that Iron Age Britain was not, [12:36.06] [12:36.23]as was romantically imagined, an unbroken forest kingdom [12:40.66] [12:40.83]stretching from Cornwall to Inverness. [12:43.78] [12:43.95]It was rather a patchwork of open fields, [12:46.30] [12:46.47]dotted here and there with copses [12:48.77] [12:48.95]giving cover for game, especially wild pigs. [12:52.70] [12:54.63]And it was a crowded island. [12:56.93] [12:57.11]We now think that as many people lived on this land [13:00.02] [13:00.19]as during the reign of Elizabeth 1, 2,500 years later. [13:05.42] [13:05.59]Some archaeologists believe that almost as much land [13:09.26] [13:09.43]was being farmed in the Iron Age as in 1914. [13:13.42] [13:18.23]So it's no surprise to see one spectacular difference [13:21.85] [13:22.03]from the little world of Skara Brae. Great windowless towers. [13:26.89] [13:27.79]They were built in the centuries before the Roman invasions, [13:31.06] [13:31.23]when population pressure was most intense [13:33.58] [13:33.75]and farmers had growing need of protection, [13:36.70] [13:36.87]first from the elements, but later from each other. [13:40.57] [13:50.03]Many of those towers still survive but none are as daunting [13:54.34] [13:54.51]as the great stockade on Arran, off Ireland's west coast. [13:59.82] [14:03.43]They didn't just spring up around the edges of the British islands. [14:07.50] [14:07.67]All over the mainland too, the great hill forts of the Iron Age [14:12.30] [14:12.47]remain visible in terraced contours such as at Danebury and Maiden Castle. [14:17.94] [14:18.11]Lofty seats of power for the tribal chiefs, [14:21.30] [14:21.47]they were defended by rings of earthworks, [14:23.90] [14:24.07]timber palisades and ramparts. [14:26.94] [14:33.35]Behind those daunting walls was not a world in panicky retreat. [14:39.14] [14:41.91]The Iron Age Britain into which the Romans eventually crashed [14:46.30] [14:46.47]with such alarming force was a dynamic, expanding society. [14:50.58] [14:52.15]From their workshops came the spectacular metalwork [14:55.10] [14:55.27]with which the elite decorated their bodies. [14:57.94] [14:58.11]Armlets, pins, brooches and ornamental shields like this, [15:02.22] [15:02.39]the so-called Battersea Shield. [15:05.26] [15:24.55]Or the astonishing stylised bronze horses, [15:27.78] [15:27.95]endearingly melancholy in expression, [15:30.62] [15:30.79]like so many Eeyores resigned to a bad day in battle. [15:35.38] [15:40.51]With tribal manufacture came trade. [15:43.58] [15:44.63]The warriors, druid priests and artists of Iron Age Britain [15:48.14] [15:48.31]shipped their wares all over Europe, [15:50.34] [15:50.51]trading with the expanding Roman Empire. [15:54.26] [15:54.43]In return, with no home-grown grapes or olives, [15:57.42] [15:57.59]Mediterranean wine and oil arrived in large earthenware jars. [16:02.50] [16:07.43]Iron Age Britain was not the back of beyond. [16:11.30] [16:11.47]Its tribes may have led lives separated from each other by custom and language, [16:15.98] [16:16.15]and they may have had no great capital city [16:18.22] [16:18.39]but together they added up to something in the world, [16:21.66] [16:21.83]the bustling of countless productive, energetic beehives. [16:25.98] [16:26.15]What the bees made was not honey, but gold. [16:29.66] [16:32.47]The Romans would have known about this strange but alluring world [16:36.58] [16:36.75]of fat cattle and busy forges. [16:39.38] [16:39.55]Evidence of its refinement would have found its way to Rome. [16:43.70] [16:47.15]Along with the glittering metal ware came stories of alarming cults, [16:52.01] [16:52.19]which may have prompted the usual Roman dinner time discussions. [16:56.22] [16:57.19]"All very interesting, I daresay, [16:59.75] [16:59.91]"but would we really want to call them a civilisation?" [17:04.10] [17:12.27]Supposing they would have seen an ancient sculpture, [17:16.38] [17:16.55]like this haunting stone face with its archaic secretive smile, [17:21.82] [17:21.99]the eyes closed as if in a mysterious devotional trance. [17:26.70] [17:26.87]The nose flattened, the cheeks broad, [17:28.94] [17:29.11]the whole thing so spellbindingly reminiscent [17:32.70] [17:32.87]of things the Romans must have seen in Etruria or the Greek islands. [17:37.10] [17:37.27]Would they then have said, "Yes, this is a work of art"? [17:40.74] [17:40.91]Probably not. Sooner or later they would have noticed [17:44.42] [17:44.59]that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out, [17:47.82] [17:47.99]like a boiled egg, to hold sacrificial offerings. [17:51.90] [17:52.07]Then they would have remembered stories [17:54.37] [17:54.55]that Rome told about the grisly brutality of the druids. [17:59.02] [17:59.19]Perhaps they would have even taken note of the stories [18:02.78] [18:02.95]told by the northern savages themselves, [18:05.62] [18:05.79]of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully [18:09.98] [18:10.15]to those who had parted them from the rest of their body, [18:13.10] [18:13.27]warning of vengeance to come. [18:15.54] [18:16.35]Then they would have thought, "Perhaps not. [18:19.42] [18:19.59]"Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads." [18:24.74] [18:33.35]So why did the Romans come here, to the edge of the world, [18:37.10] [18:37.27]and run the gauntlet of all these ominous totems? [18:41.18] [18:42.35]There was the lure of treasure, of course, [18:45.10] [18:45.27]all the pearls that Tacitus believed lay around Britain in heaps. [18:49.46] [18:49.63]Even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most, [18:53.66] [18:53.83]the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier. [18:58.95] [19:00.31]And so, in the written annals of Western history, [19:03.46] [19:03.63]the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date. [19:08.82] [19:08.99]In 55 BC Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel. [19:14.54] [19:18.95]Julius Caesar must have supposed [19:21.33] [19:21.51]that all he had to do was land his legions in force [19:25.78] [19:25.95]and the Britons, cowed by the spectacle of the glittering helmets [19:30.50] [19:30.67]and eagle standards, would simply queue up to surrender. [19:34.34] [19:35.11]They'd understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. [19:39.90] [19:40.07]The trouble was, geography didn't. [19:42.63] [19:44.95]Not once but twice, Julius Caesar's plans were sabotaged [19:50.02] [19:50.19]by that perennial secret weapon of the British, the weather. [19:54.50] [19:54.67]On the first go round in 55 BC, a cavalry transport [19:58.54] [19:58.71]that had already missed the high tide and got itself four days late, [20:02.70] [20:02.87]finally got going only to run directly into a storm [20:06.41] [20:06.59]and be blown right back to Gaul. [20:09.38] [20:12.75]A century later, Claudius, the club-foot stammerer, [20:16.70] [20:16.87]on the face of it, the most unlikely conqueror of all, [20:19.90] [20:20.07]was determined to get it right. [20:22.42] [20:22.59]If it was going to be done at all, Claudius reckoned, [20:25.58] [20:25.75]it had to be done in such massive force that there was no chance [20:29.34] [20:29.51]of repeating the embarrassments of Julius. [20:32.26] [20:32.43]Claudius's invasion force was immense, some 40,000 troops. [20:38.26] [20:38.43]The kind of army that could barely be conceived of, [20:41.38] [20:41.55]much less encountered in Iron Age Britain. [20:44.74] [20:46.71]Claudius did succeed where Julius Caesar had failed, [20:50.46] [20:50.63]through a brilliant strategy of carrot and stick. [20:54.38] [20:57.55]He would seize the largely undefended oppida or towns [21:01.98] [21:02.15]and strike at the heart of British aristocracy, [21:04.86] [21:05.03]its places of status, prestige and worship. [21:08.73] [21:10.27]For the chieftains sensible enough to reach for the olive branch [21:14.05] [21:14.23]rather than the battle javelin, Claudius had another plan. [21:17.34] [21:17.51]Give them, or rather their sons, a trip to Rome, [21:21.18] [21:21.35]a taste of the dolce vita, and watch their resistance melt. [21:26.02] [21:29.59]While in Rome, many must have begun to notice [21:33.62] [21:33.79]that life for your average patrician was exceptionally sweet. [21:39.10] [21:39.27]Before long they began to hunger for a taste of it themselves. [21:43.66] [21:43.83]If there were sumptuous country villas [21:46.39] [21:46.55]amidst the olive groves of the Roman countryside, [21:49.58] [21:49.75]why could there not be equally sumptuous country villas [21:53.14] [21:53.31]amidst the pear orchards of the South Downs? [21:55.98] [21:56.15]Just fall in line, be a little reasonable, [21:59.54] [21:59.71]some judicious supports here and there [22:02.70] [22:02.87]and see what results - the spectacular palace at Fishbourne. [22:08.22] [22:15.07]The man who built it was Togidubnus, [22:17.58] [22:17.75]king of the Regnenses in what would be Sussex, [22:20.86] [22:21.03]and one of the quickest to sign up as Rome's local ally. [22:24.62] [22:24.79]He was rewarded with enough wealth to build himself [22:27.78] [22:27.95]something fit for a Roman. [22:30.10] [22:30.27]Only the extraordinary mosaic floors survive [22:33.10] [22:33.27]but it was as big as four football pitches, [22:36.02] [22:36.19]grand enough for someone who now gloried in the name [22:39.62] [22:39.79]of Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus. [22:43.33] [22:44.43]He couldn't have been the only British chief [22:46.50] [22:46.67]to realise on which side his bread was buttered. [22:49.70] [22:49.87]All over Britain were rulers who thought a Roman connection [22:53.30] [22:53.47]would do more good than harm in their pursuit of power and status. [22:58.59] [22:59.51]The person we usually think of as embodying [23:02.22] [23:02.39]British national resistance to Rome, [23:04.38] [23:04.55]Queen Boudicca of the East Anglian tribe of the Iceni, [23:07.90] [23:08.07]actually came from a family of happy, even eager collaborators. [23:12.18] [23:12.35]It only took a policy of incredible stupidity, [23:15.94] [23:16.11]arrogance and brutality on the part of the local Roman governor [23:20.22] [23:20.39]to turn her from a warm supporter of Rome to its most dangerous enemy. [23:25.38] [23:27.51]In a show of brutal arrogance, the local governor [23:31.13] [23:31.31]had East Anglia declared a slave province. [23:34.10] [23:34.27]To make the point about who exactly owned whom, [23:36.70] [23:36.87]Boudicca was treated to a public flogging [23:39.78] [23:39.95]while her two daughters were raped in front of her. [23:43.57] [23:45.51]In 60 AD, Boudicca rose up in furious revolt, [23:49.58] [23:49.75]quickly gathering an army bent on vengeance. [23:52.94] [23:53.11]With the cream of the Roman troops tied down [23:55.62] [23:55.79]suppressing an insurgency in north Wales, [23:58.62] [23:58.79]Boudicca's army marched towards the place which symbolised [24:02.38] [24:02.55]the now-hated Roman colonisation of Britain, Colchester. [24:07.10] [24:07.27]It helped that it was lightly garrisoned. [24:10.22] [24:10.39]After a firestorm march through eastern England, [24:13.22] [24:13.39]burning Roman settlements one by one, it was the city's turn. [24:17.86] [24:18.03]The frightened Roman colonists had to fall back [24:21.02] [24:21.19]to the one place they were sure they were going to be protected [24:24.54] [24:24.71]by their emperor and their gods - the great temple of Claudius. [24:30.02] [24:35.83]If the terrified Romans thought they were going to escape [24:38.98] [24:39.15]the implacable anger of Boudicca, they were seriously out of luck. [24:43.66] [24:43.83]With thousands of them huddled terrified [24:46.39] [24:46.55]in the temple above these foundations, she began to set light to it. [24:51.10] [24:51.27]They must have been able to smell the scorch and smoke [24:54.42] [24:54.59]and fire coming towards them, as their new imperial city burned [25:00.10] [25:00.27]with themselves and everything else buried in smoke and ash. [25:05.39] [25:05.55]Thousands died in this place. Boudicca had her revenge. [25:10.67] [25:22.39]But her triumph couldn't last. [25:25.30] [25:29.55]The lightly-defended civilians of Colchester were one thing [25:32.74] [25:32.91]but now she would have to face a disciplined Roman army, [25:36.22] [25:36.39]fully prepared for all she could throw at them. [25:39.70] [25:44.07]Sure enough, when the two forces met, [25:46.86] [25:47.03]her swollen and unwieldy army was no match for the legions. [25:51.74] [25:53.47]Her great insurrection ended in a gory chaotic slaughter. [25:57.58] [26:03.15](SHOUTS AND CRIES) [26:06.30] [26:34.31]Boudicca took her own life [26:37.06] [26:37.23]rather than fall into the hands of the Romans. [26:40.98] [26:47.19]Lessons had been learned the hard way, at least for some. [26:50.70] [26:50.87]When barbarians started attacking Roman forts in the north, [26:54.86] [26:55.03]the Romans knew exactly what to do. [26:58.06] [26:59.19]On 79 AD, an enormous pitched battle took place [27:02.70] [27:02.87]on the slopes of an unidentified Highland mountain, [27:05.78] [27:05.95]which Tacitus calls Mons Graupius. [27:09.18] [27:09.35]The result was another slaughter, [27:11.98] [27:12.15]but not before the Caledonian general, Calgacus, [27:16.02] [27:16.19]delivered the first great anti-imperialist speech on Scotland's soil. [27:20.42] [27:23.15]Here at the world's end, on its last inch of liberty, [27:28.27] [27:28.43]we have lived unmolested to this day [27:32.05] [27:32.23]defended by our remoteness and obscurity. [27:35.82] [27:36.03]But there are no other tribes to come, nothing but sea and cliffs [27:43.10] [27:43.27]and these more deadly Romans whose arrogance you cannot escape [27:47.62] [27:47.79]by obedience and self-restraint, to plunder, butcher, steal. [27:53.06] [27:53.31]These things they misname empire, [27:56.34] [27:56.51]they make a desolation and they call it peace. [28:01.34] [28:08.47]Of course, Calgacus never said any such thing. [28:12.22] [28:12.39]This was a speech written long after the event by Tacitus [28:15.70] [28:15.87]and it's entirely Roman, not Scottish. [28:18.70] [28:18.87]Yet this burning sentiment would echo down the generations. [28:23.38] [28:23.55]Like Britannia itself, the idea of free Caledonia [28:27.46] [28:27.63]was from the first, a Roman invention. [28:30.70] [28:32.03]There was one emperor, Spanish by birth, who understood [28:35.65] [28:35.83]that even the world's biggest empire needed to know its limits. [28:39.34] [28:39.51]He of course was destined, in Britain at any rate, [28:42.66] [28:42.83]to be remembered by a wall. [28:45.34] [28:48.39]When we think of Hadrian's Wall, we think of the Romans [28:52.01] [28:52.19]rather like US cavalrymen deep in Indian country, defending the flag, [28:56.78] [28:56.95]peering through the cracks and waiting nervously [28:59.46] [28:59.63]for war drums and smoke signals. [29:01.66] [29:01.83]A place where paranoia sweated from every stone. [29:04.86] [29:05.03]It wasn't really like that at all. [29:07.54] [29:07.71]As ambitious as this was, stretching 73 miles [29:11.49] [29:11.67]from coast to coast from the Solway to the Tyne, [29:16.06] [29:16.23]and though he probably conceived it in response to a rebellion [29:20.10] [29:20.27]on the part of the people the Romans loftily referred to as Brittunculi - [29:25.70] [29:25.87]wretched little Brits - almost certainly, he didn't mean it [29:29.41] [29:29.59]as an impermeable barrier against barbarian onslaught from the north. [29:34.90] [29:39.39]The wall was studded with milecastles and turrets [29:42.62] [29:42.79]and forts like this one at Housesteads. [29:45.70] [29:45.87]But as Britain settled down in the second century AD, [29:49.34] [29:49.51]these places became up-country hill stations [29:53.18] [29:53.35]more like social centres and business centres [29:55.98] [29:56.15]than really grim, heavily-manned barracks. [29:59.82] [30:01.47]These forts were not to prevent people going to and fro [30:05.82] [30:05.99]so much as to control and observe them. [30:08.90] [30:09.07]The forts in particular, became a place [30:11.06] [30:11.23]where a kind of customs scam was imposed on those [30:14.46] [30:14.63]trying to do business on one side or the other. [30:17.62] [30:17.79]It's better to think of the wall not so much as a fence [30:21.06] [30:21.23]but rather a spine around which control [30:24.46] [30:24.63]of northern Britain toughened, hardened and prospered. [30:27.82] [30:30.99]If we can imagine Hadrian's Wall as not such a bad posting, [30:34.86] [30:35.03]it's because our sense of what life was like at the time [30:37.94] [30:38.11]has been transformed by one of the most astonishing finds [30:41.18] [30:41.35]of recent archaeology - the so-called Vindolanda Tablets. [30:45.42] [30:45.59]They're scraps of Roman correspondence, jottings, [30:49.37] [30:49.55]scribblings and drafts of letters thrown away as rubbish [30:52.62] [30:52.79]by their authors almost 2,000 years ago. [30:56.10] [30:56.27]For 25 years, archaeologists have been digging up these letters, [31:00.78] [31:00.95]1,300 of them, from seven metres below the ground. [31:04.78] [31:04.95]Up they've come, lovingly separated from dirt, [31:08.82] [31:08.99]debris and each other and painstakingly deciphered. [31:13.14] [31:13.31]At once poignantly fragile and miraculously enduring, [31:16.58] [31:16.75]the voices of the Roman frontier in the windy North Country, [31:20.98] [31:21.15]loud, clear and strong. [31:23.71] [31:25.47]From Masculus to Tribune Serianus. Greeting. [31:30.02] [31:30.19]Please instruct as to what you want us to do tomorrow. [31:33.42] [31:33.59]Are we all to return with the standard or only half of us? [31:36.18] [31:36.35]My troops have no beer. Please order some to be sent. [31:39.86] [31:40.03]I sent you two pairs of socks and sandals, [31:42.54] [31:42.71]and two pairs of underpants. [31:44.70] [31:44.87]Greet Elpus Tetricus and your messmates, [31:47.14] [31:47.31]with whom I pray you get on. [31:49.22] [31:49.39]He beat me and threatened to pour my goods down the drain. [31:52.10] [31:52.27]I implore your mercifulness not to allow me, [31:54.57] [31:54.75]an innocent from overseas, to be beaten by rods as if a criminal. [31:59.34] [31:59.51]I warmly invite you to my birthday party on the third day [32:02.22] [32:02.39]before the Ides of September. Please come, [32:05.30] [32:05.47]as it will be so much more enjoyable if you were here. [32:09.34] [32:11.35]A world of garrisons and barracks had now become a society in its own right. [32:17.42] [32:22.75]From the middle of the second century, [32:25.21] [32:25.39]it makes sense to talk about a Romano-British culture, [32:28.62] [32:28.79]and not just as a colonial veneer imposed on the resentful natives, [32:32.57] [32:32.75]but as a genuine fusion. [32:35.13] [32:41.59]Nowhere was this clearer than here in Bath. [32:45.70] [32:59.95]Bath was the quintessential Romano-British place. [33:04.02] [33:04.19]At once mod con and mysterious cult, [33:07.70] [33:07.87]therapy and luxury, a marvel of hydraulic engineering [33:12.30] [33:12.47]and a showy theatre of the waters of healing. [33:16.25] [33:16.43]The spa was an extravaganza of buildings constructed over a spring [33:20.94] [33:21.11]that gushed a third of a million gallons of hot water [33:24.81] [33:24.99]into the baths every day. [33:27.90] [33:59.79]When you soaked in a bath, you washed your body and your soul, [34:04.50] [34:04.67]ablution and devotion at the same time. [34:07.74] [34:07.91]Much of the bathing, the flirting, the gossip and the deal making [34:12.42] [34:12.59]went on in this austerely grandiose Great Bath. [34:16.34] [34:19.63]The spiritual heart of the place was the sacred spring - [34:24.49] [34:24.67]a ferny grotto where water collected [34:27.62] [34:27.79]and where the devotees of the presiding goddess, Sulis Minerva, [34:32.14] [34:32.31]could look through a window at the altar erected in her honour [34:38.10] [34:38.27]and occasionally could throw gift offerings in her way. [34:42.78] [34:45.79]Bath was not the only place where Romano-Britons [34:48.90] [34:49.07]could wallow in the well-being of the province. [34:51.74] [34:57.31]In Dover, the Romans built this 96-bedroom hotel, [35:01.34] [35:01.51]now 20 feet below street level but the last word in luxury [35:05.58] [35:05.75]for any VIP disembarking from Gaul. [35:09.50] [35:12.67]By the fourth century, however, Rome was in deep trouble, [35:17.18] [35:17.35]attacked by barbarians and undermined by political turmoil. [35:21.90] [35:22.07]Britannia couldn't remain detached [35:24.42] [35:24.59]from the fate of the rest of the empire forever. [35:27.98] [35:28.99]At some point, Dover's significance for Britannia changed [35:33.14] [35:33.31]from a port of entry to a defensive stronghold. [35:36.34] [35:36.51]The "Welcome" mat gave way to the "Keep Out" sign, [35:39.62] [35:39.79]in the shape of massive walls, built through the Grand Hotel's lobby. [35:45.94] [35:48.91]This is the sort of wall the Romans built at Dover. [35:52.58] [35:55.03]This is Portchester, a Roman shore fort, [35:58.22] [35:58.39]a truly colossal structure that makes all too clear [36:01.74] [36:01.91]the scale of threat the Romans felt the barbarians posed. [36:06.14] [36:08.59]Inside it lies a Norman castle, built 1,000 years later [36:12.78] [36:12.95]and now completely dwarfed by it. [36:15.06] [36:18.55]It was one of several forts strung out along the south and east coasts. [36:24.14] [36:26.11]Not even fortifications like those of Portchester [36:29.10] [36:29.27]or Hadrian's Wall in the north, could work without adequate troops. [36:33.78] [36:33.95]As more and more legionaries were sucked back to fight on the continent, [36:38.18] [36:38.35]and as Picts and Saxons, spotting weakness, [36:40.94] [36:41.11]started their own raids from the north and east, [36:44.22] [36:44.39]Britannia couldn't help but feel the chill of vulnerability. [36:49.66] [36:49.83]When, in the year 410, Alaric the Goth sacked Rome [36:54.54] [36:54.71]and the last two legions departed to prop up the tottering empire, [36:59.34] [36:59.51]that chill developed into an acute anxiety attack. [37:04.18] [37:08.11]This was one of the genuinely fateful moments in British history, [37:11.89] [37:12.07]the legions departing. [37:13.90] [37:14.15]It wasn't like Hong Kong in 1997, no flags flying or pipers piping. [37:20.54] [37:20.71]The Governor wasn't driving around his courtyard seven times pledging to return. [37:25.38] [37:25.55]Doubtless, many of the Romano-British did hope and expect to see the eagles back. [37:32.70] [37:32.87]The tax collectors, magistrates, town councillors, [37:36.82] [37:36.99]poets, potters, musicians and the newly-Christian priests [37:41.90] [37:42.07]all said to themselves, "Well, this couldn't go on forever. [37:46.02] [37:46.19]"We couldn't always look to Mother Rome, and she is half-infested with barbarians. [37:51.21] [37:51.39]"We can handle this. [37:53.18] [37:53.35]"We've got the Saxon shore forts. [37:55.34] [37:55.51]"We can hire barbarians to deal with the other barbarians. We can handle this. [38:00.50] [38:00.67]"We CAN handle this." [38:03.02] [38:09.91]For the less confident, there was only one thing to do: [38:13.42] [38:13.59]Bury their treasure and head for the hills... [38:16.66] [38:18.43]planning, as refugees always do, [38:21.22] [38:21.39]to return when the worst was over and dig it all up again. [38:25.50] [38:27.15]In the case of this particular hoard of 15,000 coins, [38:31.26] [38:31.43]gems, medals, and this exquisite silver tigress, they never did. [38:36.94] [38:43.67]It was instead discovered in 1992 at Hoxne in Suffolk [38:48.61] [38:48.79]and is now kept in the British Museum. [38:52.10] [38:58.51]Some sort of force was badly needed to stop the barbarians [39:02.78] [39:02.95]in the north and west from exploiting the vacuum of power [39:07.58] [39:07.75]left by the exit of the legions. [39:10.78] [39:12.87]At first, the warriors from north Germany and Denmark, [39:15.98] [39:16.15]sailing up-river in their wave horses, seemed a boon, not a curse. [39:20.58] [39:21.67]When one local despot, Vortigern, naively imagined [39:24.98] [39:25.15]he could use the imported barbarians as his own military muscle [39:29.38] [39:29.55]but neglected to pay them as per the contract, [39:32.82] [39:32.99]he made one of the more spectacular blunders in British history. [39:37.50] [39:37.67]Furious at being stiffed, [39:40.05] [39:40.27]the Saxons turned on the local population they'd been hired to defend. [39:44.30] [39:44.47]After burning and pillaging, they took land in lieu of pay, [39:48.50] [39:48.67]settling down amidst the understandably dismayed native population. [39:54.66] [39:56.27]Dismayed, but not, I think, terrified. [39:59.30] [39:59.47]Though the earliest chroniclers of the coming of the Saxons [40:02.66] [40:02.83]thought of Vortigern's faux pas as heralding a sort of final apocalypse, [40:07.82] [40:07.99]no one had turned the lights out on Roman Britannia [40:11.58] [40:11.75]and declared the Dark Ages to have begun. [40:14.10] [40:14.27]The long process by which Roman Britannia morphed [40:18.22] [40:18.39]into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was gradual not sudden, [40:21.90] [40:22.07]an adaptation, not an annihilation. [40:25.50] [40:27.31]For a long time the Saxons were a tiny minority, [40:31.18] [40:31.35]numbered in hundreds rather than thousands, [40:34.06] [40:34.23]and lived in an overwhelmingly Romano-British population. [40:38.70] [40:39.19]As different as these cultures were, they were still neighbours. [40:43.46] [40:43.63]The vast majority tried and succeeded to live a sort of Roman life. [40:49.10] [40:52.67]Here at Wroxeter, Shropshire, the Roman Veraconium, [40:56.37] [40:56.55]there's wonderful evidence of this make-do, hybrid, improvised world [41:00.82] [41:00.99]poised between Roman ruins and Anglo-Saxon beginnings. [41:04.98] [41:05.15]When the bath house stopped functioning, [41:07.45] [41:07.63]the citizens took the tiles and used them for paving. [41:10.98] [41:11.15]When the roof of the great basilica threatened to fall in, [41:15.18] [41:15.35]the citizens went and demolished the building themselves. [41:18.82] [41:18.99]Inside the shell they put up a new timber structure [41:22.61] [41:22.79]spacious and elegant enough to give them the sense [41:25.38] [41:25.55]they were still living some sort of Roman lifestyle, [41:28.54] [41:28.71]although in an increasingly phantom Britannia. [41:32.22] [41:34.75]Eventually the adaptations became ever more makeshift, [41:39.30] [41:39.47]the fabric of Roman life increasingly threadbare, [41:43.09] [41:43.27]until it did indeed fall apart altogether. [41:47.30] [41:48.55]The island was now divided into three utterly different realms. [41:53.34] [41:53.51]The remains of Britannia hung on in the west. [41:57.90] [41:58.07]North of the abandoned walls and forts [42:00.45] [42:00.63]the Scottish tribes for the most part, stayed pagan. [42:04.33] [42:04.51]England, the realm of the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, [42:08.42] [42:08.59]was planted in the east, all the way from Kent [42:11.90] [42:12.07]to the kingdom of Bernicia in Northumbria. [42:15.30] [42:21.27]The Saxon chiefs often built their settlements [42:24.14] [42:24.31]on the ruined remains of old Roman British towns, [42:27.46] [42:27.63]not least of course London. [42:29.46] [42:29.63]Like many invaders, they hankered after what they had destroyed. [42:33.86] [42:34.91]The showier pieces of their armour often bear [42:37.82] [42:37.99]startling resemblances to Roman armour [42:40.34] [42:40.51]and their leaders aspired to be something more than war chiefs. [42:44.21] [42:44.39]They wanted to be known as "dux", a Roman duke. [42:47.98] [42:48.87]In one crucial respect, the Germanic tribal societies [42:52.90] [42:53.07]were utterly different from the Romans. [42:55.98] [42:56.15]Theirs was a culture based on the blood feud and punishment by ordeal. [43:01.06] [43:01.35]An entire social system, its plunder was the glue of loyalty. [43:07.14] [43:16.95]The Saxons were no more immune to change than the Romans before them. [43:22.30] [43:23.19]To look at the relics recovered from Sutton Hoo burial site [43:27.38] [43:27.55]is to be teased by a powerful question: [43:30.34] [43:30.51]Did the Saxon lord buried here find his resting place [43:34.46] [43:34.63]in a pagan Valhalla or in a Christian Paradise? [43:38.94] [43:40.83]The history of the conversions between the sixth and eighth centuries [43:44.94] [43:45.11]is another crucial turning point in the history of the British Isles. [43:49.58] [43:56.39]But while the legions had long gone, [43:58.95] [43:59.11]the shadow of Rome fell once again on these islands. [44:03.02] [44:03.19]This time though, it was an invasion of the soul [44:06.58] [44:06.75]and the warriors were carrying Christian gospels rather than swords. [44:11.69] [44:14.55]The process began in a country that had never been touched [44:17.90] [44:18.07]by Roman rule in the first place - [44:20.14] [44:20.31]the land the Romans called Hibernia - Ireland. [44:23.46] [44:24.87]We have to remember that the most famous [44:27.30] [44:27.47]of the early missionaries to Ireland, St Patrick, [44:29.93] [44:30.11]was a Romano-British aristocrat, [44:32.74] [44:32.91]the patrician - or Patricius - as he called himself. [44:37.38] [44:37.55]So there was nothing remotely Irish about the teenager [44:40.11] [44:40.27]who was kidnapped and sold into slavery by Irish raiders, [44:44.05] [44:44.23]in the early fifth century. [44:46.38] [44:50.15]It was only after he escaped, probably to Brittany, [44:53.93] [44:54.11]and ordained, then visited by prophetic dreams, [44:57.54] [44:57.71]that he returned to Ireland as a messenger of the gospel. [45:02.30] [45:06.67]Patrick understood that the monastic ideal of retreat [45:09.94] [45:10.11]was perfectly matched with the needs of local royal clans. [45:14.94] [45:16.95]So monasteries like Arran, off the gull-swept Irish coast, [45:20.42] [45:20.59]with their beehive cells and encircling stone walls, [45:24.90] [45:25.07]looked like a stronghold, an encampment for God. [45:29.50] [45:37.71]What about the dragon slayers on the mainland? [45:41.22] [45:41.39]Who converted them? [45:43.58] [45:48.87]One man gives us the answer. [45:51.78] [45:53.07]To all schoolchildren of my generation, growing up in the 1950s, [45:58.06] [45:58.23]he will always be the Venerable Bede. [46:01.50] [46:03.47]Bede was not just the founding father of English history. [46:07.66] [46:07.83]Arguably, he was the first consummate storyteller in all of English literature. [46:12.90] [46:13.07]He was not exactly well travelled. [46:15.53] [46:15.71]He spent virtually his entire life here in Jarrow. [46:19.46] [46:19.63]But in a few luminous lines he could conjure up [46:22.70] [46:22.87]not just the world of holy men and hermits [46:25.38] [46:25.55]but the world of the great timbered halls of Saxon kings, [46:29.30] [46:29.47]with their firelight and roasting meat, [46:32.10] [46:32.27]or the death throes of a great war-horse. [46:35.02] [46:35.19]It was this masterful grip on narrative [46:37.78] [46:37.95]that made Bede not just an authentic historian [46:40.78] [46:40.95]but also a brilliant propagandist for the early church. [46:44.54] [46:47.11]Bede sees without any starry-eyed sentimentality [46:51.26] [46:51.43]what could overcome the deep mistrust of the pagan kings [46:54.94] [46:55.11]when asked to abandon their traditional gods. [46:58.46] [46:58.95]According to the most touching speech in Bede's entire history, [47:02.22] [47:02.39]the clinching moment of persuasion for one noble [47:05.62] [47:05.79]was nothing more than a gambler's bet. [47:08.62] [47:09.51]It seems to me, my Lord, that the present life of men on earth [47:13.66] [47:13.83]is as though a sparrow in winter should come to a house [47:17.30] [47:17.47]and swiftly fly through it, entering at one window [47:21.42] [47:21.59]and then passing out through another, while you sit at dinner [47:25.37] [47:25.55]with your captains in a hall made warm with a great fire, [47:28.70] [47:28.87]while outside are the raging tempests of winter rain and snow. [47:33.42] [47:33.59]For that short time it be within the house, [47:37.18] [47:37.35]the bird feels no smart of the winter storm, but soon passes again [47:42.42] [47:42.59]from winter back to winter and escapes your sight. [47:46.13] [47:46.31]So the life of man here appears for a little season, [47:50.34] [47:50.51]but what follows or has gone before, that surely we do not know. [47:55.18] [47:55.35]If this new learning has brought us any certainty, [47:59.13] [47:59.31]methinks it is worthy to be followed. [48:02.18] [48:05.43]Typically, Bede put these words in the mouth of a nobleman. [48:09.38] [48:09.55]The church in Anglo-Saxon England [48:11.54] [48:11.71]was just really a branch of the aristocracy. [48:14.34] [48:14.67]St Wilfred, the aristocratic Bishop of York, [48:18.06] [48:18.23]deliberately used part of Hadrian's Wall to build at Hexham [48:21.77] [48:21.95]a basilica worthy of Roman authority. [48:25.18] [48:26.51]For Bede and St Wilfred, it was crucial [48:29.26] [48:29.43]that the Roman, not the Irish Celtic church, won over Britain. [48:34.02] [48:34.91]What they passionately desired was the reconnection [48:38.02] [48:38.19]of a converted country with its Roman mother. [48:41.62] [48:41.79]A true homecoming. [48:44.25] [48:45.51]The authority of the Roman Saxon church [48:48.22] [48:48.39]didn't guarantee protection. [48:51.06] [48:51.23]Bede had had forebodings before he died in 735. [48:55.94] [48:56.11]Sure enough, half a century later, in 793, [48:59.89] [49:00.07]the Anglo-Saxon chronicle reports... [49:02.42] [49:02.59]Dire portents appeared over Northumbria. [49:05.22] [49:05.39]Immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning [49:07.95] [49:08.11]and fiery dragons were seen flying through the air. [49:11.18] [49:11.35]A great famine followed. [49:13.34] [49:13.51]A little after, on the 8th June, the ravages of heathen men [49:18.70] [49:18.87]miserably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne. [49:22.18] [49:24.71]The heathen men were of course, the Vikings. [49:28.22] [49:38.99]If you look long and hard enough at any culture [49:42.61] [49:42.87]you'll find something good about it. [49:45.17] [49:45.35]Historians of the Vikings, understandably distressed [49:48.94] [49:49.11]at the rape and pillage stereotype, [49:51.41] [49:51.59]have asked us lately to think of things other than sail, land, [49:55.18] [49:55.35]burn and plunder to say about the Vikings. [49:57.58] [49:57.75]They've said, "Look at their metalwork, their ships, the great poetic sagas." [50:02.74] [50:02.91]Now we know the Vikings did come [50:05.02] [50:05.19]bearing something other than a nasty attitude. [50:07.70] [50:07.87]They came carrying amber, fur and walrus ivory. [50:11.82] [50:11.99]Somehow, though, this vision of the Vikings [50:15.38] [50:15.55]as rapid-transit, long-distance commercial travellers, [50:19.22] [50:19.39]singing their sagas as they sail to a new market opening, [50:22.98] [50:23.15]wouldn't have cut much ice with the priests [50:25.45] [50:25.63]here at the cathedral of Bradwell-on-Sea, [50:28.58] [50:28.75]just a crab scuttle away from the area [50:30.98] [50:31.15]where I grew up, on the Essex shore. [50:33.42] [50:38.67]There'd been a church at Bradwell-on-Sea for over 200 years. [50:43.26] [50:43.43]It was originally built on the remains of an old Roman fort. [50:47.42] [50:47.59]The priests would have found [50:49.78] [50:49.95]those stone defences reassuring as they waited nervously [50:55.38] [50:55.55]for the Viking raids that they knew could strike [50:58.66] [50:58.83]hard and fierce at any moment. [51:01.42] [51:07.23]In addition to land, Vikings were keen on another kind of merchandise... [51:11.10] [51:11.91]people - whom they sold as slaves. [51:15.45] [51:16.59]A thousand slaves were taken from Armagh in one raid alone. [51:21.78] [51:22.75]A burial dated 879 contained a Viking warrior with his sword, [51:28.14] [51:28.31]two ritually murdered slave girls [51:30.61] [51:30.79]and the bones of hundreds of men, women and children, his very own body count, [51:35.54] [51:35.71]to take with him to Valhalla. [51:38.09] [51:48.27]On the positive side, there was one thing [51:50.65] [51:50.83]that the Vikings did manage to do, however inadvertently. [51:54.14] [51:54.31]They created England. [51:56.58] [51:56.75]By smashing the power of most of the Saxon kingdoms, [51:59.86] [52:00.03]the Vikings accomplished what, left to themselves, [52:02.78] [52:02.95]the warring tribes could never have managed - [52:05.82] [52:05.99]some semblance of alliance against a common foe. [52:10.10] [52:12.03]To push back the Viking onslaught, [52:14.02] [52:14.19]to repair some of the terrible damage they'd done, [52:16.54] [52:16.71]would need more than just a competent tribal warrior chief. [52:20.49] [52:20.67]It would need someone with a vision, [52:22.66] [52:22.83]not just of victory, but of government; [52:25.66] [52:25.83]someone who could harness Anglo-Saxon energy and determination [52:28.98] [52:29.15]to Roman military discipline. [52:31.45] [52:31.63]It was going to need, in fact, a local Charlemagne, [52:34.78] [52:34.95]with the intelligence and imagination of a truly Roman ruler. [52:38.38] [52:44.19]He, of course, was Alfred. [52:46.86] [52:47.79]Our cherished image of Alfred is of the hero on the run, [52:51.14] [52:51.31]up against steep odds, muddling through, [52:53.87] [52:54.03]taking it on the chin when scolded for burning the cakes. [52:58.14] [52:58.31]But the story which really tells you all you need to know about Alfred [53:03.22] [53:03.39]isn't set in the swamps of Somerset [53:06.02] [53:06.19]but on the Palatine Hill of Rome [53:08.75] [53:08.91]and is more startling and illuminating - and it happens to be true. [53:15.01] [53:16.83]As a small boy, Alfred's father, King Aethelwulf, [53:20.14] [53:20.31]sent him on a special mission to Rome to see Pope Leo IV, [53:24.09] [53:24.27]probably to ask the Pope's help in the struggle against the Vikings. [53:28.98] [53:29.15]In a ceremony, the Pope dressed the little fellow [53:32.58] [53:32.75]in the imperial purple of a Roman consul [53:35.66] [53:35.83]and wound a sword belt around his waist, [53:39.14] [53:39.31]turning little Alfred into a true Roman Christian warrior. [53:43.86] [53:47.31]On a second trip, Alfred spent a whole year in the Eternal City, [53:51.42] [53:51.59]along with his father, walking the ruins of the empire and the sacred sites. [53:56.61] [53:56.79]It was surely this experience which made him what he was - [54:00.82] [54:00.99]a philosopher prince, who, in more than a literal sense, [54:04.86] [54:05.03]translated the works of Roman wisdom for Anglo-Saxon consumption. [54:10.62] [54:10.79]Through Alfred, England got something it hadn't had [54:14.02] [54:14.19]since the legions departed: [54:15.90] [54:16.07]An authentic vision of a realm governed by law and education, [54:20.42] [54:20.59]a realm which, since Alfred commissioned a translation of Bede into Anglo-Saxon, [54:25.71] [54:25.87]understood its past and its special destiny [54:29.18] [54:29.35]as the western bastion of a Christian Roman world. [54:33.50] [54:36.15]First, he had to win those battles. [54:38.61] [54:38.79]He took the throne of Wessex at a time when, [54:41.17] [54:41.35]despite a recent victory, the collapse of his kingdom seemed imminent, [54:45.42] [54:45.59]and with it the entirety of Anglo-Saxon England. [54:49.37] [54:50.67]It was here amidst the reeds of Athelney Island [54:53.42] [54:53.59]that the heroic legend of Alfred, the fugitive on the run, [54:57.46] [54:57.63]finally turning the tide against his enemies, was born. [55:01.33] [55:04.07]By the spring of 878, Alfred had managed to piece together [55:08.26] [55:08.43]an improvised alliance of resistance. [55:10.66] [55:10.83]At King Egbert's stone on the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, [55:14.37] [55:14.55]near the site of this 19th-century folly celebrating it, [55:17.94] [55:18.11]he took command of an army which two days later, [55:21.50] [55:21.67]fought and defeated Guthrum's Vikings. [55:25.34] [55:30.35]Alfred's victory was a holding operation, [55:33.10] [55:33.27]forcing the Vikings to settle for less than half the country. [55:37.18] [55:38.91]But when in 886 Alfred entered London, [55:42.14] [55:42.31]rebuilt over the old Roman site, [55:44.58] [55:44.75]something of a deep significance did happen. [55:47.98] [55:48.15]He was acclaimed as the sovereign lord [55:50.74] [55:50.91]of all the English people not under subjection to the Danes. [55:55.02] [55:55.19]So it appears that during Alfred's lifetime [55:57.86] [55:58.03]the idea of a united English kingdom [56:00.98] [56:01.15]had become conceivable and even desirable. [56:04.98] [56:08.95]The exquisite Alfred Jewel found not far from Athelney [56:12.46] [56:12.63]has inscribed on its edge: "Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan" - [56:16.98] [56:17.15]"Alfred caused me to be made." And the same might well be said [56:21.22] [56:21.39]of his reinvention of the English monarchy. [56:24.22] [56:24.39]The enormous haunting eyes which dominate the figure [56:27.46] [56:27.63]are said to be symbols of wisdom or sight, [56:30.98] [56:31.15]apt qualities for a ruler whose ambitions were so lofty. [56:35.94] [56:36.59]Alfred's special gift was to be able to see clearly [56:40.98] [56:41.15]England's place in the scheme of things, [56:44.38] [56:44.55]the debt of his realm to antiquity his bequest to posterity. [56:49.54] [56:51.79]With his realm transformed, Alfred made possible [56:55.38] [56:55.55]a true Anglo-Saxon renaissance in the 10th century, [56:59.42] [56:59.59]creating stunning works of Christian art and architecture. [57:03.70] [57:03.87]But the long shadow of Rome still fell over all this brilliance. [57:08.34] [57:08.51]Alfred's grandson would be crowned the first King of England [57:12.70] [57:12.87]in a great Roman-style coronation. [57:15.70] [57:15.87]Where did this momentous event happen? Where else but Bath? [57:21.78] [57:27.71]We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. [57:29.94] [57:30.11]England has been conceived, not yet born. [57:32.94] [57:33.11]To the north, Pictland has even further to go [57:35.54] [57:35.71]before it's recognisably a kingdom of Scotland. [57:38.46] [57:38.63]For a generation or two it did look as though [57:41.82] [57:41.99]the grafting of Anglo-Saxon culture onto the enduring legacy of Roman Britain [57:46.78] [57:46.95]had produced an extraordinary flowering. [57:50.22] [57:50.39]The shoots were still green, the buds were tender and vulnerable, [57:54.82] [57:54.99]and before this new kingdom had a chance to mature, [57:58.06] [57:58.23]it would be cut down by the devastating blow of an invader's axe. [58:03.62]

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