On the bank of the River Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament a dramatic bronze statue depicts a spear-wielding charioteer. This is Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni tribe, who in AD60 raised a spectacular (if ultimately unsuccessful) rebellion across East Anglia against Roman rule, in the process sacking Colchester, St Albans and London. The Roman chronicler Tacitus described her flowing red hair and her rallying cry to her tribesmen – a precursor of another redheaded warrior queen, Elizabeth I, and her legendary address to troops when the Spanish Armada threatened invasion of her realm in 1588.
Boudicca and Elizabeth have long been celebrated as iconic female embodiments of power: outliers either side of a medieval era that generally venerated male bellicosity and looked with suspicion at ‘strong’ females who upset the ‘natural order’;
