In a sense this was two for the price of one:  we heard the Tudors brought to life with both the passion of a novelist and the understanding of a historian.

Not only are the novels closely based on the source material, but even the covers are put together using costumes and models chosen and supervised by the author herself*. As she says, novels are where a lot of people learn their history.

The trouble is, not everyone reads novels… which brings me to World Book Day . There’s a fresh batch of ‘Quick Reads’ being launched to celebrate it today – and  Alison Weir’s ‘Traitors of the Tower‘ is one of them.

Quick Reads are ‘ideal for regular readers wanting a short, fast read, and for those who have lost the reading habit or find reading tough. They are short, sharp shots of entertainment.‘

Looking at the selection, they seem to have something for everybody.  Anyone not wishing to shell out the very reasonable £1.99 a copy can stroll across to the Quick Reads website before the end of the week and download a Ruth Rendell story for free.

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*The cover for  ‘Traitors of the Tower’ isn’t: it’s based on a painting. Not 100% historically accurate, according to the author, but  still a jolly good picture.

As Mark points out, ‘It makes you wonder about the level of cultural diversity that the Romans introduced when they came to Britain.’

It also makes me wonder about the accuracy of some news reporting, since  one or two articles in the ensuing media blizzard have promoted her to  ‘African Queen.’ This would be nice if it were true, but it’s completely unproven.

Unable to resist adding to the vast amount of comment that ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’  has attracted, I see from the caption on the second photo that her remains were excavated in 1901. Presumably she’s been re-examined recently in the light of new knowledge. There have been suggestions that other folk buried in Roman York were of African descent, too, although I don’t know whether they were around at the same time.  (Maybe they had some connection with the Emperor Severus, who came from North Africa and was based in York many decades before her.)

What I’d like to know is whether this is actually unusual. What you discover about a skeleton must to some extent depend on what you test it for – and what you test it for must depend on all sorts of factors, including how much time and money you have. So, do we have a unique lady from the fourth century or an especially observant and well-funded bunch of archaeologists from the twenty-first? If anyone knows, please get in touch. Meanwhile, one wonders how many other surprises are lying quietly unexamined in museum store-rooms…

Incidentally, they seem to have all sorts of interesting skeletons in York. Remember this article from 2005?

With luck,  this link should get you there. I was hoping to do something extremely clever that would make it appear before your very eyes within this blog, but the magic wand seems to have got stuck somewhere round a bend in the computer. Apologies.

Further down the screen, the nice people at Nokia suggested three more downloads that they considered to be related to my recent choice. Heaven only knows how their computers make these selections.

In the real world, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a married woman in possession of a copy of ‘Mansfield Park’ is unlikely to be in want of a game called ‘Fart Control’.

After a long journey cooped up on the bus, the last thing two classes of  eight-year-olds wanted to do was to stare at old stuff in glass cases. The teachers and ‘Parent Helpers’ (of whom I was one)  managed to keep them under control around the museum – in the sense that nothing was actually broken – but by the time we stopped at the service station on the way home, most of the children were stir-crazy.

The teachers – how I admire teachers! – instigated a  game of run-over-the-grass-to-that-wall-and-back. Meanwhile, several of the girls wanted to find the toilets. As I went to escort them across the road, they rushed off on their own.  Ignoring shouts of, “Wait!” they ran straight  into the path of an oncoming car.

The car stopped just in time. The girls fled. Nobody was hurt, but the thought of what might have happened still makes me shudder.

All of which is a very longwinded way of introducing the good news that the revamped Ashmolean is a lot more exciting than the old one.  I spent a delightful afternoon there yesterday. Cleverly concealed behind the traditional facade, the display space has been hugely expanded  – all watched over by Apollo, see below  – and is capped by ‘Oxford’s First Rooftop Restaurant’.

As my previous visit consisted largely of counting children and responding to cries of ‘Miss!’  it’s hard to compare the new with the old. But it all seems much lighter, brighter and infinitely more approachable than I remember. The Roman gallery will be small but perfectly formed as soon as they’ve finished labelling everything (these are early days), but the thoughtful way the material is themed means that Roman items are spread across several displays. ‘Human image,’ for example, has a  reproduction statue of Augustus painted in the way his subjects would have seen it.

My favourite item is more modest.  As one who has knitted several (largely unappreciated) socks over the years, I have to admire the work that went into the making of this  stripy sock for an Egyptian child who lived sometime between AD300 and the early 400’s.

Had the photo been executed with similar skill, you would be able to see that the fabric looks like ordinary knitting, although according to the label, it was all done with one needle (yes, some of us do think this is interesting). Sadly the photo is dreadful, so you’ll have to take my word for it – or better still, pop in to see the real thing in the ‘Textiles’ display.

Not to be outdone, I see the very lovely Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is opening its revamped Gallery of Greek and Roman Antiquities tomorrow. Here’s a link to the  BBC’s  slideshow.

I’ve always appreciated Colchester’s Roman walls. They served as a landmark every morning from the windows of the school bus, reminding us that we were nearly at the bus station and if the homework wasn’t done by now, there was going to be trouble.

Fortunately the present-day citizens of Colchester are a lot more awake to their heritage.  Now that the site of Britain’s only Roman Circus has been discovered on their doorstep, they’re running a determined campaign to buy  some of the land and create a Visitor Centre so we can all see what our ancestors got up to on a day at the Chariot Races.

To see how they found the site and why it’s worth saving – and to watch a real chariot in action – sit back and enjoy the Time Team Special.

They only have until 28 February to raise the money. Let’s hope the gods are smiling on them.

Snow outside, Wallander on the TV and all around us, conversations that begin, ‘In places where they have weather like this every winter…’ or, ‘I remember in 1947/1963…’

It seems like the right time to check out Stieg Larsson’s ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’

Is it as good as they say?* So far, yes. Yet curiously, although the story begins in Sweden in late December, none of the characters is complaining that they can’t get anywhere because of the snow. Clearly, in places where they have weather like this every winter…

* LATER – Yes, absolutely.

Fortunately,  greater things beckon. AD410*  was the year in which the Emperor Honorius allegedly told the Britons they would have to organise their own defences against invasion, because Rome had no troops to spare. I say ‘allegedly’ because there’s a suggestion that Honorius wasn’t writing to us but to somebody else. I don’t know how credible this is, so let’s not go there. For the purposes of this blog, Roman Britain came to an end 1600 years ago. Except…

It seems that very little in the ‘end of Roman Britain’ debate can be asserted without someone else arguing that you’ve misinterpreted the evidence. So there should be plenty of lively debate when the commemorations get going later this year. Here’s a link to the 410 website to find out about digs, events, exhibitions and opportunities for the rest of us to watch the experts disagreeing with each other.

One thing’s definite about Roman Britain, though. End it certainly did, inspiring an unknown Anglo-Saxon to write a wondrously glum poem now called ‘The Ruin’. I mean no disrespect to the Anglo-Saxons, who wrote some fabulous poetry, but it’s reassuring to know that even in the eighth century, things just weren’t what they used to be.

*readers who dislike ‘AD’ may substitute whatever term they wish

I’m the author of three mysteries featuring Roman Army medic and reluctant sleuth, Gaius Petreius Ruso.

To find out more about the books (including why they all have two titles), click here. Events are listed on this page. Then there’s the obligatory Author Page here, or read on for the latest ramblings on the blog:

In fact I’ve never heard anyone answer ‘yes’ to this question about any era, and suspect a lot of it has to do with advances in health care.

Readers who subscribe to the version of Victorian England in which the streets  were full of jolly coachmen, prancing horses and rosy-cheeked choirboys standing under gas lamps in the snow (very prevalent at this time of year) should leave now. To those  made of sterner stuff, I can thoroughly recommend a visit* to Old Operating Theatre, Museum and Herb Garret that used to be part of St Thomas’ Hospital in London. No longer in use, of course,  but apparently the oldest operating theatre in Britain. Obviously the nineteenth century is a long way removed from the Romans, but it’s said that surgery made very few advances between Classical times and the Victorian era. The Garret is a fascinating place to wander round, and a salutary reminder that whatever we may find wrong with the modern world, there’s a lot that we really, really wouldn’t want to go back to…

*a virtual visit is the only kind that can be made at the moment – it reopens on 6 January 2010 when, for reasons not entirely clear, it is celebrating The Odyssey of Chocolate. (I always knew chocolate was medicinal.)