It’s an open secret that I have always rather disliked what the Roman Empire stood for. Maybe this was a way of rationalising my horror at the complexity of the period’s archaeology and history. And of all its many aspects, the army in the province of Britannia is surely the most difficult, especially to the uninitiated. So I have relied heavily on my old friend Guy de la Bédoyère’s very reader-friendly introduction: Eagles Over Britannia: The Roman Army in Britain (Tempus Books, Stroud, 2001).
Very special thanks are due to two other leading experts in their fields:
Professor Simon James of Leicester University, who has advised me on matters pertaining to cohorts equites, and other facets of Roman Britain, with his characteristic good humour, wit and clarity. I am led to believe that it was when he was one of Simon’s undergraduate students that Alan learnt the phrase the ‘Bloomsbury Lubyanka’.
The other expert is, of course, somebody no crime writer can ever do without: an authority who knows and understands forensics at a very profound level. And here I have the great pleasure to acknowledge Dr Chris J. Rogers of Glyndwr University, Wrexham. I suspect it’s only a rumour, but Chris might have been an external advisor to the forensic archaeology course at Saltaire, which Alan attended in the late ’90s.
As with The Lifers’ Club before it, the writing and production of this book would have been impossible without the constant advice, help and encouragement of my editor, Elizabeth Garner. The detailed work of copyediting was done by Gillian Holmes, with great care and consideration. She was assisted by Annabel Wright and Molly Powell. The staff at Unbound have been their normal, helpful selves and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Justin Pollard who first suggested that I should try crowdfunding. It has been hard work, but the greatest fun.