Boudica

Boudica led the rising that, one Roman historian wrote, nearly cost Rome the whole of Britain. Not one word of her own survives. Everything we know comes from her enemies, and from the ground.

Boudica was a queen of the Iceni, a people in the east of Britain, nearly two thousand years ago. Her husband, the king, had been Rome's friend. When he died, Roman officers treated his kingdom as a prize of war. Her army left three towns in ruins, a Roman legion marching to stop her lost its foot soldiers, and Rome's own general gave up London rather than fight her.

This book tells her story the way historians have to piece it together, from two Roman writers who do not always agree. Tacitus says the war began with a will and a whip. Cassius Dio says it began with money, and he has Boudica let a hare go from the folds of her dress before the gathered tribes. With the two accounts side by side, a young reader starts to ask who wrote a story down, and when.

Some answers are underground. In Colchester and London, archaeologists dig down through brick and old cellars until the earth turns red and black: burnt clay and charcoal from the year of the rising. Under one Colchester shop they found charred dates and figs, and a small pit of gold and silver jewelry. Archaeologists think a woman hid it as the news came. No one dug it up again.

The sentences are plain enough for a confident young reader to manage alone, or for a parent to read aloud. Hard names come with a guide to saying them (Prasutagus is pruh-SOO-tuh-gus), and words like legion, colony and omen are explained the moment they first appear.

Ages 6-10 · About 7,500 words · Black-and-white line illustrations · Chapter book

Content note: Includes war, the whipping of the queen and an attack on her daughters, the killing of townspeople, human sacrifice, and Boudica's death.

Also available for Ages 0-4 (Standing Up to Rome) and Ages 3-7 (The Hare and the Chariot).