Boudica

By Vanessa Collingridge

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Jun 26, 2007
• ISBN: 9781468303810

Reviews for Boudica

[marysgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book covers almost the same territory as Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen and contains several quotes from that author Richard Hingley. The major exception being that Collingridge goes further back in time to Rome and Caesar to study their attitudes toward women in society as a backdrop for her research. Both books look at the classical authors and modern archaeology to tell their tales. Both books conclude we know very little about the woman known as Boudica--including her name, which might have been a title or battle name (it means Victory). Both books spend about half their pages on history and about half on the legend that grew up around Boudica and her image down through the ages in literature, art, drama, and role in politics. However, Collingridge's book is meant as a popular biography. There are no footnotes, attributions are given in the text, and the narrative is in modern accessible language. She does provide a select biography and index. Personally I preferred the Hingley book, but I am doing research and liked the footnotes and attributions. Both books are thorough and well-written. (I think) the casual reader would enjoy either or both.

[beadinggem_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written and highly readable. The author did research the topic well but the focus of her book is the legend behind the woman and the impact this warrior queen had for the past 2000 years. The chapters about Boudicca herself start only after half the book.

[meggo_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The problem with writing a biography about Boudica is that there's virtually nothing in the way of evidence on which a full-length book can be based. After all, her reign, if in fact she did reign, lasted only a year, a mere blink in the span of ages. As a result, this book is also the story of the early Roman emperors, Cartimandua, and the other early British tribal leaders. On the one hand, this is an interesting approach since it provides a depth on the period and a context that helps the (limited) story of Boudica to make sense. But the book is ostensibly a book about Boudica, and in this, it misses the mark.

[john257hopper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bit of a mixed bag. This 400 pager is not really a biography of Boudica in the traditional sense of the term. Indeed, little in the way of hard fact is known about the actual events of her life - or rather of the last year or so of her life that we know about from Tacitus and Cassius Dio - so only really enough to fill barely a quarter of the book. The first half of the book covers previous Roman and British history at some length on the basis - understandable to a degree, but stretched here to breaking point at nearly 200 pages - that one needs to understand that earlier history in order to understand Boudica. The last quarter looks at Boudican symbolism in literature and in popular and political culture over the centuries and makes some interesting points, though rather labours the Britannia imagery and constant comparisons to famous females including Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Margaret Thatcher and even Princess Diana. Probably the most interesting aspect of the book is the coverage of archaeological finds, what has been extrapolated from them and how this relates or not to what Tacitus and Cassius Dio tell us.

[daumari · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first I'd heard of Boudica (or Boadicea as it was spelled then) was in the Eagle Eye Mysteries in London edutainment game- one of the Eagles' friends wrote a song inspired by her. Popped up again when I signed up for the library's winter reading program, which had a time-traveling theme- read a book written about, in or set different time periods, which is problematic for me because I tend to stick to either fantasy worlds or science. Didn't feel like reading about actual Romans for the 'Ancient Rome' category, so opted to read about the infamous British queen's rebellion against them.

An interesting read. Collingridge first looks at the historical context and story of the actual Boudica (Rome and conquering the Gauls then Ocean then Britannia, etc.) then digs into the cultural evolution of the myth around Boudicca in the second half. The most fascinating part to me was actually a tangent- the fabrication of the Celtic identity by European Romantics in the late 1700s- early 1800s and the weird fusion of Druidism and the Britons. Use of Boudica as an avatar for whatever values the people of the time wanted to say was also interesting- would love to see comparisons of all the different depictions in plays.

I have way, way too many library books in my queue so I'm glad to get this done. Actually missed submitting any reads to the winter reading program, whoops.