Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain's Warrior Queen [Hardcover]

Vanessa Collingridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 2006

A groundbreaking new study and surprisingly personal history of Britian's legendary warrior queen, and a must-read for anyone interested in British or Roman History, feminism, or all things Celtic. Combining new research and recent archaeological discoveries, Vanessa Collingridge has written a major new biography on this shadowy and often misunderstood figure of ancient history.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Collingridge's comprehensive history doesn't just look at the Iron Age queen who conquered three cities in Roman-occupied Britain but begins with the Roman incursion into Britain under Julius Caesar. It wasn't until almost 90 years after Caesar, under the emperor Claudius, that the Romans really got a foothold in Britain, and the invaders did not find it an easy province to manage. While some tribes accepted the path of least resistance and submitted to Roman rule, others did not. Boudica's husband, King Prasutagus, was a pro-Roman "client king," but after his death Roman soldiers beat Boudica and raped her two daughters. The proud queen went on a rampage, gathering warriors from various tribes and sacking three cities (including London) before her army was defeated. Drawing on two Roman historians, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, Collingridge shows an early lionization of Boudica at the final battle, and later chapters go on to illustrate just how Boudica became legend, even influencing another famous British queen, Elizabeth I. An absorbing historical study of how an upstart queen became a legend. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Publisher

Boudica has been mythologized as the woman who dared to take on the Romans to avenge her daughters, her tribe, and her enslaved country. Her immortality rests on the fact that she almost drove the Romans out of Britain, and her legend has become the reference point for any British woman in power, from Elizabeth I to Margaret Thatcher. As Boudica has become well known as an icon of female leadership and strength, the true story of her revolt against the Roman empire has only become more distant- until now. Combining new research and recent archaeological discoveries, Vanessa Collingridge has written a major new biography on this shadowy and often misunderstood figure of ancient history. Boudica provides a detailed history of the "Celtomania" that has adopted Boudica as its earliest hero, and the nationalist and feminist causes that have also tried to claim her as their own. While tracking the origins and impact of the various versions of the Boudica legend, Vanessa Collingridge unearth a historical woman who is far subtler- but every bit as fascinating- as the myths associated to her name.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (May 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585677787
• ISBN-13: 978-1585677788
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,513,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining yet informative--an engaging read, July 9, 2007

By 

M. A. Brewer (Portland, ME United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain's Warrior Queen (Hardcover)

I bought this book shortly after its release, but it's been (regrettably) sitting on my shelf until just a week ago, when I decided it was about time I got around to it. How glad I was that I did! Boudicca has long been an interest of mine, and I was pleased with Collingridge's thoroughly researched account of the queen's life and, perhaps more importantly, the context from which historians glean information about her and her people. By providing a full summary of the world in 61 AD, and a Roman as well as a Briton perspective of the events surrounding the Iceni queen's debasement, revolt and subsequent death, Collingridge places Boudicca in an environment neither exaggerated nor abstracted with sensationalism.

Needless to say, I was dismayed upon trekking over to Amazon and finding the "average rating" for this book so low, based entirely on a single review from a person who appeared to have had little interest in the subject in the first place, denouncing the book as "superficial" and claiming its author makes no attempt to show why we should care about the subject. The only problems I could see with this very solid history was with editing (names of historical personages are occasionally misspelled: Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar is referred to as "Caesarian" rather than the more accurate and commonly cited spelling Caesarion, and other errors crop up now and again), but these, placed in the context of the book, are nitpicker's complaints as Collingridge clearly knows her material regardless of editor's faults. Rest assured, the book is not superficial as claimed by the (until-now) sole reviewer, but rather exhaustively researched. Collingridge cites primary Roman sources as well as interviews with contemporary historians to create a fully fleshed-out portrait of Boudicca and her life and times, and continuing on to analyze the icon of the "warrior queen" in British culture then and now.

So why SHOULD we care about the subject, to address an aforementioned complaint? While not the most widely-known portion of Roman history, Boudicca's revolt should be remembered for the same reason we should remember any history. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Roman history, British and Celtic history, Boudicca herself, and even to anyone interested in gender politics through the ages as well as the changing iconography of the warrior queen. To anyone willing to lend an ear (or an eye, in this case), Collingridge offers a fascinating, solid account of these subjects and more that is certainly worth your time... and more than two stars on Amazon.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The life and times of Britains's Iceni Warrior Queen, May 24, 2008

By 

Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain's Warrior Queen (Hardcover)

This book describes the life of Boudica and times and the context in which the Iceni Warrior-Queen lived.
It tells of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, something about pre-Roman Britain, of Julius Ceasar's invasion of Britain, the conquest of Britain a century later by Claudius, and of the Druids
around which British life centered in pre-Roman times and were ruthlessly stamped out by the Romans.
Interesting insight in human sacrifices by the Druids as well as their use of hallucinogenic drugs such as hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The book gives us an insight into the sheer brutality of the Roman Empire, destroying entire nations and seizing lands at will.
In retaliation for an assault on his men by German tribesman, Julius Casar ordered one of the biggest slaughters of his career.

However the book centers around the Roman coquest of Britain and how the British tribes were subdued.
It is important to note that prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain centuries later, there never was an identity among Britons as a nation.
They identified according to the various tribes to which they belonged, which essentially formed confederations in different regions of today's England.
The Iceni were a client tribe of Rome, and their lands stretched across most of what is now East Anglia, covering today's Norfolk, north Suffolk, and north-east Cambridgeshire.
Boudica's husband, Prasutagus, was the king of Iceni.
when Prasutagus died his attempts to preserve his line were ignored and his kingdom was annexed as if it had been conquered. Lands and property were confiscated and nobles treated like slaves. According to Tacitus, Boudica was flogged and her young daughters brutally raped. Boudica launched a rebellion of the Iceni, and although ultimately defeated, she sacked the towns of what are today Colchester (Camulodunum), London (Londinium) and St Albans (Verulamium) ruthlessly destroying these towns and rooting the Roman masters of Britain.

The rest of the book traces the legend of Boudica as it developed thorugh the ages in England, both as a central component of British (or more accurately English national identity) as well as the symbol or by-word of a
strong women She was an inspiration for Queen Elizabeth I when she rallied the English people to resist the invasion by the British Empire and centuries later for the suffragette movement.
It is also worth noting here a large moral difference between the suffragettes and most of today's radicals.
When the First World War broke out, the Sufragettes suspended their campaign for women's suffrage and threw their energies into the war effort against Germany.
Compare this toi the moral turpitude of most of today's radical left in the USA and Britain, who are openly siding with Islamic terrorist movements and terrorists states, int he West's battle for survival against Islamo-Nazism.
Among the Leftist allies of the Islamists are included many radical feminists who are oblivious to the fact that in Islamist states such as Iran, and the Palestinian Entity, women have no human rights at all.
Perhaps the strugle of these movements for social change in their own countries would have had more legitimacy has they not sided with the murderers and tyrants.
Boudica was in the 1980s often compared to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The book also details Boudica's role in popular culture through the centuries, including the books, plays and movies about her.
Sculptures of Boudica encapsulate the different roles the Iceni Queen may have played.
A 1902 statue by Thomas Thornycroft, erected 1902 at Westminster Bridge, London, depicts Boudica armed with a lance riding a scythed chariot carried by rearing horses.
At Cardiff city hall one can see a very maternal depiction of Boudica with her two beautiful daughters in an exquisite work by James Harvard Thomas unveiled in 1916.
This book makes for fascinating reading and riveting history.
It includes much social history and reveals some finds showing the houses and clothes worn by people in Roman Britain such as the leather briefs found in Queen's Street, London, of leather briefs, probably worn by a female acrobat or performer , in Roman ruled Londinium (London).

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars look elsewhere, February 6, 2008

By 

J. Carter "Ipse Dixit" (Batavia Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain's Warrior Queen (Hardcover)

The main reason for reading this book was to find out about the life and legend of Boudica. She didn't show up until after page 175. First you must wade through Roman history and not just its conquest of Britain, then the history of Britain, than a history of Druids then a brief interlude in which she finally tells us there isn't much factual information about Boudica. Then the book rambles off into trivia. The book is well written, full of information however just not on the person in the book's title: Boudica. If you want to know anything about Boudica -- look elsewhere.