Making an early appearance in this volume are the first Roman invader of Britain, Julius Caesar, whose campaigns in 55 and 54 B.C. are succinctly described, and the Iceni queen Boudicca, whose rebellion nearly ended the Roman occupation only seventeen years after the Emperor Claudius's conquest. Later figures are Bede, "the earliest and most influential of all English historians," and King Canute, the Danish monarch famed for his failure to hold back the sea, up to Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king, who died in the 1066 Battle at Hastings. This is British history spun out as a sequence of biographies - the lives of the people behind the events - presented in a roughly chronological order for easy browsing. The range of personalities is extensive, embracing royalty and politicians, poets and playwrights, inventors and artists. A cross-referenced index makes it easy to find specific individuals and the connections between them. Read Less