Neil Oliver - A History of Ancient Britain

To Tom Affleck
who was there at the start

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

I was soaked to the skin and shivering in what I earnestly believe to have been the outskirts of hypothermia. I was in the middle of a peat bog in the west of Ireland and the freezing rain was sweeping across the landscape in great cloaking sheets. I might as well have been under water. We had been filming for hours, one of the cameras had already given up the ghost and I was asking myself, quite seriously, what on earth I was doing standing ankle-deep in mud, with rainwater running down my skin inside my clothes. But then I looked around at the crew director, cameraman, sound recordist, researchers and reminded myself of something important: my discomfort in the rain and wind would one day be seen by an audience; someone, somewhere would see that it had happened. But while my misery was being recorded for posterity, everyone elses would go unnoticed. And no one was complaining. Not a single word.

As often as possible sometimes several times a day, in fact I remind myself how lucky I am to have this job. Bad weather might be an occasional blight, but after all its only an occupational hazard for folk who mostly work outside. I also try and bear in mind that my job is made possible only by the unstinting efforts of others.

This is the time therefore, long overdue, when I get to thank those who also stand miserable and drenched on sodden bogs (sometimes bearing flasks of hot tea), or on wind-blasted cliff tops, or in the wheelhouses of little boats wallowing in big seas. I have not forgotten!

Just like a television documentary, a book is the product of the hard work of many different people. One with a grand title like A History of Ancient Britain is dependent upon the efforts of a whole range of thoughtful and painstaking professionals.

A mountainous debt is owed to Michael Dover, my editor and publisher at Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Unless and until you have listened to his always calm, constantly reassuring and encouraging voice, you cannot begin to imagine what a steadying presence he provides for anyone struggling to face down the unforgiving stare of the blank page. Thank you, Michael.

Linden Lawsons brilliance as a copy-editor and proof-reader deserves nothing less than whole pages of appreciation. I am constantly stunned by her attention to detail and by her ability to fine-tune and fettle, so that the final version is as close as humanly possible to what I actually meant to say all along.

Grateful thanks are also due to editorial assistants Nicki Crossley and Jillian Young, and picture researcher Caroline Hotblack has shown great imagination and sensitivity in sourcing all of the illustrative material that enlivens the text. My experience of Weidenfeld & Nicolson over the past few years has been a real treat and the whole team there has my admiration.

It almost goes without saying that the book would never have happened without the BBC Television series of the same name. Cameron Balbirnie was the series producer and somewhere along the way he has become a good friend as well. No mortal could have given more of himself in pursuit of the creation of a series worthy of the name of A History of Ancient Britain. Not content with sweating blood to create the best television possible, Cameron also found time to read through the proofs of this book to help ensure we were all singing from the same hymn sheet. Executive producer Eamon Hardy was an ever-present champion of the series and grateful thanks are owed to him as well.

Also crucial were the five producer-directors each of whom contributed hugely to the content of the book. So to Paul King, Arif Nurmohamed, Dick Taylor, Jeff Wilkinson and Simon Winchcombe a huge and heartfelt thank-you.

Series researchers Sarah Ager, Ellie James, Poonam Odedraand and Mark Williams worked wonders sourcing and checking information, finding contributors and fighting the forces of error and falsehood on a daily basis. I just hope I have the chance to work with them again.

Without the organisational genius of Dominic Bolton, Sarah Vickers, Alice Pattenden and Sue Ng, the wheels would have come off the Ancient Britain wagon long ago. Dominic in particular was and is a marvel to me. How he patiently stayed on top of the mountain of arrangements and, more importantly, the re-arrangements he had to make day after day and week after week is quite beyond my comprehension.

The epic look of the series was for the most part the work of the principal editor Martin Johnson. Thanks to him, the finished article had the feel, in my opinion, of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Camera operators and sound recordists are special breeds of human being. While the rest of the team struggles up mountains, through caves and tunnels and across rivers and streams, the camera and sound crew must cover the same terrain while lumbered with the heaviest and most cumbersome technical kit imaginable. Cameramen Patrick Acum, Toby Wilkinson, Neville Kidd, Ben Joiner, Justin Ingham, Michael Pitts and John McIntyre and sound men Sam Staples and Mike Williams would surely thrive in the SAS. And then, when they arrive in the desired spot, be it summit or seabed, they are required to be creative and adept, making everywhere look wonderful and me heroic! On top of all that they were possessed of senses of humour that didnt just make each hard day tolerable, but a positive pleasure. For all the laughs almost more than anything else a thousand thank-yous.

Sophie Laurimore, my television agent at Factual Management, and Eugenie Furniss, my literary agent at William Morris Entertainment, fight the good fight on my behalf every day. I honestly dont know what I would do or where I would be without them. Lots of love to both, as always.

Finally, and most importantly, I must acknowledge the biggest debt of all, to my wife, Trudi who soaks up all the strain, takes care of the family and runs the whole show at home while I waft around the world on the magic carpet of television. How she puts up with me and all of this, I really dont know. But she does, and I dont forget that either.

There is a sequoia tree in the Sierra Nevada of California known as the Great Bonsai. The men and women of the US Forest Service are protective of their charge as they are with all sequoias and prefer its precise location to remain less than well known. Sequoias grow only in the Western Sierra Nevada and are therefore something of an endangered species. There are no sequoia forests as such they occur only in groves within forests of lesser, more plentiful species, a handful of giants standing here and there like members of an exclusive clique, surrounded by hoi polloi. Their apparent disdain for the fir trees crowded around their waists is almost palpable.

A handful of celebrity sequoias like General Sherman and the Grizzly Giant are on the tourist trail and get most of the attention which means many others are left in relative peace. That is the way the rangers like it.