Caroline Lawrence's Top Roman Sites in London

A few days ago, a fan of my Roman Mysteries books emailed to ask which places I would recommend for a visit to the nation’s capital. It’s a good question. London has been almost continuously occupied since the paleolithic period and is crammed with history including a myriad of goodies from the four centuries of Roman occupation. There is history everywhere, especially in the City of London, the square mile that is now the financial district but once housed the Roman fort and port. These are my top half dozen Roman-related sites. Incidentally, they are all free of charge! 

1. The British Museum 
If you only have time for one stop, make it this one. I use it as a kind of club to meet overseas visitors. I go there at least once a month and take fans to the Roman Life Room (69) and also room 70. If you have time, check out the Roman Britain room (49) & the Enlightenment Gallery, where you can touch an exact replica of the Rosetta Stone.
Tip: Go in the back way, via Montague Place; they are now doing bag searches and you will avoid the worst queues. 
Related blog: The Riddle of the Roman Vase

2. Museum of London 
London’s other great museum will soon be moving to Old Smithfields Market and might have a train passing through it. At the time of writing it is near St Paul’s tube station in the Barbican. There is a wonderful section devoted to Roman London. 
Tip: Look out for bits of London’s Roman wall outside and indeed, all over the City of London. 
Related blog: Visualising Roman London

3. The Victorian & Albert 
Did you know you can see Trajan’s column in London? It’s a plaster cast, but still gives you a good view and lovely detail. Go up to the viewing gallery while they are refurbishing the cast gallery. Michelangelo’s David is also there. Yes, it’s Renaissance not Roman, but still worth visiting.
Tip: Visit the tea rooms across the courtyard and marvel at their beauty. 
Related blog: Trajans Column at the V&A

4. Petrie Museum 
Not far from the British Museum in the maze of UCL (University College London) is this delightful gem of a museum. Egypt was important in Roman times and you can see many Roman era artefacts on display. Look out for ancient fabric, palm leaf sandals, charms for turning away evil and portraits of some Romans who lived there. It is open from 1-5 on Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Tip: combine this with a visit to the British Museum nearby. 
Related blog: Roman Egypt at the Petrie

5. The Thames Foreshore
If you are brave, descend steep steps on the north side of the Thames beside the Millennium Bridge. Wear Wellingtons or sturdy boots and gloves. Go at low tide and you will be amazed at the artefacts literally covering the foreshore, including lots of Roman brick. If you are very lucky you might find a Roman hairpin, votive figurine or coin. You can keep anything you see on the surface. This is called ‘Mudlarking’
Tip: Don’t touch anything you pick up with bare hands until you’ve washed it. 
Related blog: Mudlarks on the Foreshore

6. The Roman Amphitheatre 
Like most of Roman London, the amphitheatre is underground, below street level. Access is free via a lift in London’s Guildhall Gallery. If you look across the guildhall courtyard you can see the location of the amphitheatre marked out in different coloured paving stones, like an intentional urban crop mark. Down below, only a few fragments remain of the stone amphitheatre that replaced the wooden one, but there is a stylised indication of seating and competitors.
Tip: Plan your visit to coincide with the next re-enactment of Roman games.  
Related blog: Gladiator Fun Facts

P.S. A new restaurant serving ancient Roman food is due to open later this month near Fenchurch Street. I will report on Roma’s ambience and cuisine on 9 October 2016. 

If YOU have a fave London site with a Roman or Classical association, please leave it in the comments section below... 

Caroline Lawrence’s book The Roman Quests: Escape from Rome, is partly set in Roman London, AKA Londinium. 

Leeches, Lepers & Anal Surgery by Caroline Lawrence

You wait for ages for an exhibition on Ancient Medicine and then two come along at once, both in Chester, no less. It started when I decided to make a flash visit to Chester, AKA Roman Deva, site of some scenes in Death in the Arena, the latest in my Roman Quests series of books for kids set in Roman Britain.  

I tweeted about my planned day trip and a Chester historian named Emma Stringfellow tweeted back, offering to be my guide for the day so that she could show me her town. Why such generosity towards an author she has never met? Because Emma loves history, archaeology and Chester. She even coaxed the usually manically busy Dean Paton into giving up a few hours of his precious Saturday morning to show me In Good Humour, a Roman medicine exhibition mounted by his organisation Big Heritage, as well as his exhibition of Medieval Medicine called Sick to Death. 

Emma was waiting for me bright and early at Chester Rail staton at 8.45 on Saturday 23 July 2016. We walked into town, and she helped me find my bearings, pointing out Wales to the west and the road towards Northwich that my characters would be taking on their road trip. On my request we stopped at the partially-excavated amphitheatre with its modern mural and replica of an ancient tethering block for criminals or beasts. 

As we walked on, Emma gave me an idea of the layout of the town and the three-dimensionality, something you can only get from being there. She showed me the (modern) Roman garden and took me up onto the ramparts of the Saxon Wall. Chester, known as Deva in Roman times, boasted one of the three big legionary fortresses in Roman Britain. Built on a sandstone plateau, the fortress and area behind the amphitheatre would have overlooked the river Dee, which Emma said was carved out by glacial ice-melt. I was impressed by her knowledge of Chester. 

After a walk along the ramparts to get a feel for the shape of the fortress – the city streets still reflect its basic layout – we met Dean Paton at the Watergate Deli. He generously bought me tea and a croissant and told me about himself. Dean is the director of a company called Big Heritage which gets grants from organisations like the Wellcome Institute to put on historical and educational exhibits.  A man after my own heart, he wants to get families interested in history and does this by making exhibitions that are informative and fun.

Refreshed and briefed, I followed them to the Grosvenor Museum for its permanent Roman exhibition including one of the biggest collection of Roman tombstones, all recovered by the Victorians while repairing a later Medieval wall. One tombstone of a centurion Marcus Aurelius Nepos, was erected by his wife, but her own epitaph is missing. It’s a mystery! 

Big Heritage’s Roman medicine exhibition – In Good Humour – strongly references the four humours, the most important aspect of Graeco-Roman Medicine and one that is ignored by almost all authors of historical fiction. I love that the introduction to the exhibit shows the four humours (Latin for ‘liquids’) that each manifest qualities of the four elements. The coloured tubes represent red blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm (mucus). 

The ancients believed that everyone had one (or two) dominant elements and that these determined a person’s temperament. E.g. Someone with too much yellow bile is ‘choleric’ HOT & DRY. They might be hot tempered but decisive and often need cooling foods and environments. A doctor aimed to help his patients find a balance of the humours. At the simplest level you could treat a fever by prescribing cool cucumber and cure a cold with hot peppers. 

I have blogged elsewhere about the humours and cupping and I’ve even posted a test for kids – Which Temperament Are You – so I was thrilled to see not only a mention of cupping vessels, but some live leeches. Dean put his hand on a wire grill above a tank of water and within moments skinny black leeches sensed the heat and began to curl up to the surface in the hopes of gorging on warm, sweet blood. They offered an alternative to wet cupping which involved cutting the arm (in the crook of the elbow) or hand (between the fingers) and letting blood flow into the cup. 

The exhibition boasts some marvellous skeletons showing examples of Schmorl’s node. This is a growth on the spine of someone who has been working too hard, probably – but not necessarily – a slave. More bones offered clues: a badly broken leg, an amputated arm bone and a skull with a hole in it from trepanning, some of which showed signs of healing and therefore indicated that the patients survived.  

There was a wooden toilet seat (Oh joy!) which reminded me that another method of balancing the humours was the clyster (enema). This might possibly be the oldest Roman loo seat from Britannia. Dean and I posed on replica toilets nearby. Just the sort of thing to grab the interest of a child. Some other notable items in the exhibition were amulets to keep away evil, various herbs to be smelled and a fine inscription in Greek by a doctor from Asia Minor to Asclepius, the god of healing.

Emma and Dean then took me along the ramparts of the upper walls to Big Heritage’s second exhibition on ancient medicine. Still in preparation the day I went, Sick to Death is now open. As you enter the spooky 14th century Water Tower, you pass the lifelike model of a medieval dysentery sufferer sitting on the loo and suffering a bad case of ‘the runs’. Just the sort of thing to delight children and make their parents go Ewww! 

But what’s inside is even more gruesome: a realistic leper begging for alms, a partly dissected criminal with his organs in bowls below him, and a life-sized placard of The Wound Man. A creepy plague doctor with his beak-like nose to be filled with aromatic herbs looks like something out of Star Wars. The exhibition is interactive so you can smell bowls of herbs and touch replica skulls showing the pockmarks of syphilis or the hole made by an arrow. 

More serendipity: a roving Roman doctor arrived when I was there. He showed me his bag of Roman instruments, so beautifully made that it would be hard for an expert to tell them from the real thing. Dean pulled out a Roman doctor’s probe and told me how the second century doctor Galen could tell by tapping what was going on under the skin. 

Surgery was a tricky proposition back in Roman times, and only used as a last resort. So I hesitated when the doctor invited me to try out a little anal surgery. In the end I agreed. He handed me a finely balanced replica scalpel and watched as I bent over a man’s (thankfully) replica backside and excised a bright red fistula (Latin for ‘ulcer’). The fistula looked a lot like one of those maraschino cherries they put in cocktails. I won’t be drinking one of those for a while. 

At the end of a satisfyingly squirmy morning I offered to treat Emma and Dean to lunch. To my surprise, Dean suggested Spud-U-Like at 39 Bridge St. He wasn’t just being considerate of my wallet; he knew that in their basement dining room you can sit next to sandstone hypocausts from the huge Roman bathhouse in the 2nd century fortress. After our jacket potatoes Dean said goodbye but Emma took me to the Dewa Roman Experience and then dropped me at the Chester Tourist Centre so I could buy a copy of Roman Chester, the book she had been brandishing like a talisman all day. As I travelled home from Chester, my mind was buzzing with ideas and my heart was full of gratitude, thanks to the generosity of two of its most passionate resident historians.

Thank you, Emma and Dean! 

In Good Humour at the Grosvenor Museum is on until 6 November 2016. 
Sick to Death at The Water Tower, Chester Walls, is on open every day in August 2016 from 10.30 to 4.30pm

Death in the Arena, book 3 of the Roman Quests, will be published in 2017. Escape from Rome, book 1, is out now. 

The Best Historical Novel Ever Written?

by Caroline Lawrence

‘Be careful what you read; a book can change your life.’

That is how I often start my presentation when I talk to schoolchildren about my historical novels set in Ancient Rome.  

For some people, the inciting incident of their life – the moment that set them on their life’s journey – was an inspirational teacher. For others it might be a field trip to a place that inspired them. Or watching a documentary on TV. 

For me it was a book read on my gap year. 

Mary Renault’s historical novel The Last of the Wine didn’t just spark my interest in Classical Greece, it captured my imagination. It made me long with all my heart to travel back in a time machine to see if the ancient world really was like that. 

But I didn’t need a time machine. 

The book was a time machine. 

Because of this book, I majored in Classics at U.C. Berkeley.

Because of this book, I came to England to study Classical Archaeology and ended up making my life here. 

Because of this book, I have spent the past twenty years writing books set in the ancient world, trying to do for others what Mary Renault did for me.

That’s how this book changed my life. 

I have praised this masterpiece of historical fiction elsewhere, but as the History Girls have been asked to write about a favourite historical novel for our five year anniversary, I thought I would put down half a dozen short excerpts from it, just for the joy of sharing them. 

In the past I would have grabbed my battered copy and opened anywhere to find a passage of brilliance, but today I have been listening to the long-awaited audiobook. These are a few of the passages jumped out at me as I walked the streets of London. They illustrate the way Renault uses her scholarship, her imagination and the five senses to put you right in the world of fifth century Greece. 

The wind from the north blew our hair from our brows, and streamed our garments out behind us. The air was clear, keen and filled with light. It seemed to us that at our command the wind would have lifted us like eagles, that our home was the sky. We joined our hands; they were cold, so that in clasping them we felt the bone within the flesh. 

(Chapter 10)

On this he paused and drew his brows together, as if trying to recall what it was he had omitted. When his forehead wrinkled, the legs of the horse which was branded on it seemed to move. 

It had been a way of mine since childhood to throw back my head when I was angry. I did this now, and felt a strangeness; I was used to the weight of my hair and it had gone. It was as if a hand had been laid on me as if to say Remember you are a man. 

At home I had found laid out on my bed my man’s mantle which my mother had woven ready a long time back. It smelt of the sweet herbs she kept her dresses in. 

(chapter 16)

There is still a good way to climb on Acrocorinth after you have passed the walls. Being so high, the place is not so thronged as our own High City; it was quiet: so that one could hear the bees in the asphodel, the little clappers of the mountain goats and a shepherd piping.

At last voices approached; Sostratos stood in the doorway, speaking to someone over his shoulder. The ribbons tied on him made him look like a bull going to sacrifice. 

(chapter 17)

Reading passages like these inspire me to put myself in the world I’m creating: to go to that creative, meditative, inspirational place deep within, and let my subconscious tell me what is happening. 

This is the magic of writing historical fiction.

This is the closest I will ever get to time travel. 

Caroline Lawrence’s newest series is The Roman Quests, set in Roman Britain at the end of the first century A.D. 

Food for Thought by Caroline Lawrence

I've been thinking about food a lot recently because I'm going to be talking about Roman cuisine at the end of this month as part of an exhibition called Food For Thought at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. 

The exhibition came out of the research of Zena Kamash, Lecturer in Roman Archaeology and Art, Royal Holloway, University of London. Long fascinated by the relationship of food and memory, she recently took part in a project called Memoria Romana. As I understand it, this is an ongoing attempt to look at Classical history in a more intuitive way. 

That's what we authors of historical fiction do every day: we take the facts from archaeology and primary sources, then go into our imaginations and try to construct a version of the past that feels real. 

For example, modern sources about food in ancient Rome usually trot out the same old 'facts': 

1. Romans reclined to dine
2. There were three courses
3. Slaves waited on you
4. Romans ate basic food like bread, olive oil and wine
5. And disgusting food like stuffed dormice and flamingo tongues
6. Not to mention fish-gut sauce
7. When you’d eaten too much you vomited

Some of these are mainly false, some true and some partly true.

It’s a bit like saying all Americans have cornflakes for breakfast, supersize hamburgers for lunch and turf'n'surf for dinner. Or that all French eat croissants and café au lait for breakfast, a Gauloise cigarette for lunch and steak frites for dinner. Remember the 80s in the UK, when we scoffed prawn cocktails, fondue, chicken kiev and Angel Delight? Those foods already seem bizarrely retro, but a future historian might have us eating them for decades. 

What scholars like Zena Kamash realise is that you can’t sum up a thousand years of Roman history into such a simple formula. 

Food varies in time and place. One of the fascinating aspects of first century British cooking is the number of new foods introduced by the Romans. And it's fun to think about the British equivalents of Mediterranean foods: butter for oil and beer instead of wine. These are some of the topics addressed by Zena and other experts in conjunction with the Corinium Museum in Food for Thought.

But as well as looking at the physical evidence, Zena has gone creative. She knows that every Roman must have had their own way of eating, their own preferences, their own habits, their own cuisine, just as we do today. On her Not Just Dormice - Food for Thought blog she has shared her 'first food memory' and her favourite cuisine, and she has encouraged the other contributors and guest bloggers to do the same.

Accordingly, Zena notes that her 'earliest food memory' is going to her village shop to buy sweets and her favourite cuisine is Middle Eastern. 

One of the contributors to the exhibition is Lisa Lodwick, an archaeobotanist who studies plant remains from Roman sites. Her earliest food memory is 'a dinosaur shaped birthday cake' and her favourite cuisine is '(modern) Italian'. 

Dan Stansbie specialises in Iron Age and Roman Britain; he is especially interested in the relationship between food and ceramics. His earliest food memory is a chocolate birthday cake and his favourite cuisine is Modern British/Anglo Indian. 

Miranda Creswell is also involved with the project. Her best food would be 'a simple Italian tomato sauce, and chestnuts'. Her earliest food memory is crunchy bread and unsalted butter, from when she lived in France. Doesn't the idea of unsalted butter on a baguette make you think of France, too?

My own earliest memory of food is probably the kosher dill pickles my Jewish father used to buy. Whenever I had an upset stomach, I would nibble one and immediately feel better. If I had to eschew all other cuisines and settle for just one, it would be Tex-Mex. That way, I’d still be able to enjoy chocolate, corn tortillas, chilli peppers, sour cream, avocado, cheese, beans, rice, beer and margaritas. Can you guess I grew up in California?

My English husband Richard says his first 'food memory' is of white bread soaked in warm milk with sugar sprinkled on top. His preferred cuisine is modern Italian. 

See how much these two simple questions hint at a person's age, ethnicity and even racial background?

Amanda Hart, director of the Corinium Museum chipped in, too: 'Probably vegemite toast 1st memory and tuna avocado sandwich fave food. This is making me hungry!' she tweeted.

Guest blogger Martyn Allen's favourite food is curry. It makes him happy. His earliest food memory is 'sprinkling the salt sachet into a packet of Smith's Salt'n'Shake whilst standing under a tree in a pub garden. Crisps, trees and pubs all continue to make me happy!' he adds.

(To see more examples from the guest bloggers, go HERE.)

Notice how emotion has crept in. We know from Proust's famous madeleine episode how powerfully evocative the sense of taste can be. 

All this food memory talk got me thinking about the characters in my new series of books set in Roman Britain. One writing exercise I often do to flesh out a character is to have them 'pack a suitcase for the weekend'. Or I imagine my character in the nude, as recommended by Sol Stein in his book Solutions for Writers. 

It occurred to me that Zena's two questions are ones I could ask my characters as I develop them and help them 'come alive'.

Juba, the twelve-year-old hero of my work in progress, is dutiful and diligent. Aeneas is his hero and, like Aeneas, Juba is of a melancholy disposition. Romans believed that people of a melancholic temperament were cool and dry, and that they needed hot, moist foods to balance these humours. So Juba will like moist roast chicken, a dish often prescribed in Roman times for melancholy.  He comes from a rich Roman mixed-race family, so maybe his first memory could be of an exotic and expensive food like flamingo tongues, clichéd though it is. Or – counterintuitively – something comforting like the Roman equivalent of French toast. 

Fronto, Juba's 14-year-old brother, is slightly OCD and of a phlegmatic temperament, i.e. easy-going and with 'cold, wet' humours. According to the Roman medical writer Galen, he should eat bread, roast meat and fish. My intuition tells me he loves 'white foods'. So high-quality bread, roast chicken breast and oat porridge with a dollop of cream are his faves. Maybe his first food memory is of Roman libum or honey-cake, a scrumptious combination of ricotta-type cheese, flour, egg and honey with the unexpected addition of a bay leaf for flavour.

Sally Grainger's recipe for Libum or Honey-cake & my husband's effort

I had the idea of a younger sister named Ursula who like me is choleric (hot and dry) and will find herself perfectly at home in cool Britannia. Galen tells me that she should eat cold, moist food like soft cereals, lettuce, cabbage and green beans. Like me, one of her favourite foods could be bitter salad with an oenogarum (wine vinegar, olive-oil and fish-gut) dressing.

How about your characters? What is the first 'food memory' of each? And what is their preferred cuisine? 

And what about YOU? 

Caroline Lawrence, author of The Roman Mysteries, spoke about Roman Food: Disgusting and Delicious at the Corinium Museum at 1pm on Saturday 30 May 2015 as part of their Roman Food Festival. Her new series, featuring three Roman children refugees in Britannia, is called The Roman Quests.