By Steve Matthews of Bookends.

Last updated 05:40, Friday, 26 September 2008

For the boy, I have something special in mind, said the governor. “He is not a child!” said my mother defiantly. “Bran is a prince, raised to be a warrior like his father! He is 11 years old. Old enough to take his place on the battlefield.”

Roman Invasion: My Story: A British Boy AD 84. Jim Eldridge. Scholastic £5.99

A Canny History of Hadrian’s Wall. Jim Eldridge. Bookcase. £8.00

Bran, together with five of his fellow warriors from the Carvetii tribe, has been captured by invading Roman legionaries. His brothers will be sent to Rome as slaves.

But Bran has a special fate. He is to be a hostage, accompanying a Roman surveyor and his working party as they prepare to build a road across Britain. The road will be the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. Bran will be a human shield, a guarantee that the workers will not be attacked by warriors from the Brigantes.

Bran’s energetic, petulant, pointless defiance is worn down. He sees the ways of the Romans at first hand and becomes aware of the difference in civilisations. He learns that victory is not to the courageous or the virtuous but to the strong.

All his countrymen’s wiles and courage and defiance are as nothing against the Romans.

“And that is another reason why the Romans will beat you. Their weapons, their armour, their discipline, their forts, their roads, their food, their water and sewage systems, everything is carefully worked out down to the last detail.”

It is a hard lesson for him to learn.

However, Jim Eldridge provides his readers with the easiest and most pleasurable of lessons.

Bran’s story is told with a verve and clarity that brings the world of 2,000 years ago immediately to life. Bran himself is every boy with a loyalty to the tribe that was as common then as it is today among young football fans.

But his story also presents the world of two 2,000 years ago so that we understand its ways, see how the practicalities of life were so different.

A young reader will readily understand some of the big historical issues and appreciate why the Romans conquered Britain.

Jim Eldridge lives at the western end of the Roman Wall, at Bowness on Solway.

Living there and walking the wall, Jim is aware of a sense of history continuously present, “the feeling that the ghosts of Roman soldiers and Ancient Britons alike are still here, attached to the places where the wall once stood. Even if you can’t see them, you can see their marks and the things they once made and used, see their footprints, fell their presence.”

Jim explores the traces the Romans left. Looks for the signs of everyday life that are to be found among the stones and archaeological artefacts.

He sees a world akin to our own: “The wall did of course fall behind schedule and run over budget. Most large building projects do. In our own time, think of London’s Millennium Dome, the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, and Wembley Stadium.”

His Canny History of the Hadrian’s Wall is a personal guide to that great monument of Roman civilisation, one of the ultimate military deterrents of the ancient world. It gives a clear blow-by-blow account of the building of Hadrian’s Wall and offers a brief but informed guide to the museums and forts that can be visited.

This is Roman history as though it happened yesterday.

Both books are available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com