Stretching across the north of England, from coast to coast, are the 73-mile long remnants of a fortification built by the Roman Army during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. It is, as our guest Adrian Goldsworthy has written, “the largest of the many monuments left by the Roman Empire and one of the most famous.”

For centuries the purpose of Hadrian’s Wall, and the life of those who built it and lived near it, were shrouded in archaeological mystery. In Adrian Goldsworthy’s new book Hadrian's Wall (Basic Books, 2018) illuminates the subject by synthesizing the latest research, and bringing to bear his powerful historical imagination on the subject. And, speaking of historical imagination, in the United States he has simultaneously published a novel set along the border of Roman Britain—the second of a series—with his study of the wall itself.

Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Historically Thinking on Apple Podcasts.

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