I re-read this book recently, for the first time in forty years or so. I loved it as an adolescent, and was interested to see how my perceptions have changed. It was written in the early 1950s, and the attitudes of Empire are very clear to me now, but they're not entirely inappropriate given that the book is the story of a young Roman officer, stationed in Britain in the years preceding Boudicca's rebellion, and the part he plays during that rebellion.

Martius is the son of a disgraced Roman general, intent on proving himself, and this might be what drives him to excel at all he does - and he is rather tiresomely all-round competent. But the atmosphere of a frontier province on the brink of rebellion is very convincingly done, and there are some vivid characters. I particularly like Flaviola, Bouddica's scholarly daughter; Gaetulicus, the very pattern of a stolid centurion; Carus the brilliant commander of the Fourteenth who suffers with endless stomach complaints. And then there's Cerialis, the incoming commander of the Ninth - bluff, loud, and in the cinema of my mind played by Brian Blessed.

A period piece, but a very good story, and the writing is excellent. I was also rather startled to realise that my powers of concentration were much better as a teenager than they are now! ( )