Anyone with an interest in the Roman occupation of Britain will enjoy this book. It is very well researched and I would opine it could be part of an historical or archaeological reading list for students. The author knows his stuff and this compilation of essays relating to the Romans, Angles, Saxes and Jutes not forgetting the eponymous Vikings, is comprehensive and astutely selected. I really enjoyed the Fall of Roman Britain and John Lambshead does an excellent job of rescuing the text from being dry and academic. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book. We'll done.

I enjoyed reading this book covering the fall of Roman Britain.it has been well researched covering all aspects of the Roman decline in Britain.I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Roman history particularly dealing with there downfall.

This is a really cool look at the early history of Great Britain. It’s really technical at times, but if you either have a background in history/archaeology or are really interested, it’s worth the effort.

This book is less about the fall of Roman Britian than a collection of essays with a general overview of Roman Britian. It began with the formation of the island, gives a bit about the Celts, including a DNA analysis. Then there is an essay about why the Romans invaded. Anyone interested in a topic like this, would already know much of the back story and as much as is known about Celtic and Roman Britian and would be seeking information on the Saxon invasions like I was.

I liked this book as they always made me learn something new. This is a series of essay and I liked how they are written.
I would like to learn something more because i'm curious about some theories.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Drawing extensively on historical, archaeological and scientific data, John Lambshead explores the decline of Roman influence in post-Roman Britain, in contrast to Continental Roman provinces where the Roman influence persisted through language and religion. Contrary to the popular narrative of a sudden overtaking of Britain by the Anglo-Saxon invaders as established from archaeological evidence, genetic data suggests that mixing between the native British population and the Germanic invaders did not happen until 150 years after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain!

Beginning by examining Britain’s unique island location and paying attention to both historical sources and geological evidence, the author posits that the Germanic invaders could cross the sea to Britain in a way that allowed a steady migration of culture, but that the invaders lacked the technological sophistication and resources to launch large-scale, powerful invasions. Pointing to carbon-14 isotope and genomic DNA analysis, the author further asserts his claims that there was no large invasion, and that the migrants and native peoples lived without interaction for nearly two centuries. Turning to linguistic evidence on the native Brythonic tongue and Vulgar Latin, the author suggests that unlike in Continental Europe where powerful Germanic invasions occurred yet Latin-influenced languages persisted, In Britain, despite the lack of powerful invasions, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that emerged did not assimilate either Latin or Brythonic.

The author argues that Rome invaded Britain for political rather than strategic or economic reasons, and hostility and resentment on both sides prevented the Romanisation of Britain from lasting long. Despite the investment in frontier defenses such as Hadrian’s Wall, war and insurrections prevented true pacification of the island. A large military force, itself unstable and plagued by mutiny, did not help. While climate change played an important role in agricultural decline across the Roman Empire, no direct climate connection was found to the social instability in Roman Britain. Third-century crisis in the Empire did not affect Britain as strongly as it did Gaul, but fourth and fifth-century insurgencies and rebellions led to the collapse of Roman Britain and withdrawal of Roman troops. Town life degraded, monetary taxation ceased and administration crumbled, effectively reverting the British lifestyle to a pre-Roman Celtic state. The south and east of Britain suffered the most, with London abandoned in 410 AD.

Based on scholarly research in the above domains, the author offers comprehensive and compelling answers to the following three questions:

-Why was Britannia so comprehensively ruined?
(Island isolation, constant insurrections, military instability and defunding due to pressures on other parts of the Empire)

-Why does molecular data fail to correlate with archaeological data when dating the Saxon migrations?
(The Brythonic/Latin populations remained clustered into villages and did not coalesce into large kingdoms; the Saxons moved into “empty space” and had little contact with the indigenous peoples until the 7th/8th centuries.)

-Why did the inhabitants end up speaking a completely new tongue?
(Saxons rose in social status over the subservient native Brythonic peoples, and the elite class adopted Saxon culture.)

I would recommend this book to history scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike — not only those with an interest in Roman Britain, but also those with an interest in the physical/life/earth sciences who would enjoy learning more about the scientific analysis behind historical claims. Certain chapters would even be valuable resources for secondary school students conducting in-depth studies of different aspects contributing to the end of the Roman Empire in Britain.

I read this as an ARC from Netgalley.com.

This book is a series of essays that set out to answer 1) why Britannia was so comprehensively ruined, 2) why molecular data does not correlate with archaeological data in regards to Saxon migrations, 3) why Britain speaks English, not an offshoot of Latin.

I'd say that a basic understanding of Roman history is helpful when reading this book, if only because otherwise the sheer number of Emperor's listed could get overwhelming. That said, I do not have a lot of in depth knowledge about Rome, and I still found Lambshead writing to be perfectly comprehensible.

The Fall of Roman Britain covers a time period that I haven't often seen covered in books, with other scholars often focusing on how the Norman invasion of 1066 changed the social and political climate of Britain. This book, instead, discussions how the happenings of the continental empire affected the isolated local populations and Roman transplants, and why the two seem to have (mostly) kept to themselves.

I'd recommend this for anyone who is interested in British or Roman history. The last chapter is really the only one that focuses exclusively on 'why we speak English", so while it is still interesting for linguaphiles. I'd note that it is not the focus of the book.