First-class border force

Anniversaries are fairly commonplace, but not 1,900-year ones. One such anniversary is to be widely marked this year for what came to be called ‘Hadrian’s Wall’.

In AD43 the Romans, already masters of a vast empire that encircled the Mediterranean Sea and extended north to the English Channel, landed on the south coast of England. By AD79 they had built forts in Cumbria and Durham, created a network of roads and occupied much of what they called Britannia north to a line between the rivers Clyde and Forth, where they had erected a temporary frontier. But a combination of rebellions by native tribes of people that had caused the deaths of many Roman soldiers and pressure elsewhere on the borders of the Roman Empire, resulted in troops being withdrawn from the north of Britain. And by AD100 a new northern border,