Free Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot by Antonia Fraser Page B

Gauls, from a Roman sarcophagus; the armed Roman soldiers contrast with the naked Celtic fighters.

Gold tores from the hoards found at Snettisham in north Norfolk in 1948/50, which were deposited between 25 BC and AD 10; each tore weighs nearly 1,000 grams. Queen Boudica would have worn something similar, as described by Dio Cassius, when urging the Iceni to battle.

Two examples of superb Celtic craftsmanship, early first century AD (shortly before the Boudican period): a beaten bronze shield, which would have been backed with wood or leather, found in the Thames at Battersea,

A decorated bronze mirror found at Desborough in Northamptonshire.

Illustration by A. S. Forrest to Our Island Story, A Child’s History of England by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall; first published in 1905 – and written in Melbourne, Australia for the author’s children – this work provided formative images of history for many British children in the first half of the twentieth century, including the author.

Model of the Roman temple of Claudius at Colchester, as it would have appeared to the Britons who, infuriated by this symbol of alien rule, sacked it in AD 60; from the Colchester and Essex Museum.

A cast of the bronze head of Claudius, found in 1907 in the River Aide, near Saxmundham in Suffolk and thought to have been hacked off its statue during the sack of Colchester (the jagged edges of the neck can still be seen); the head, an incriminating piece of evidence, was probably thrown into the river after the suppression of the revolt.

Model of a British chariot of the time of Boudica as it would actually have been (from the National Museum of Wales): a marked contrast with the scythe-wheeled popular image of the same subject.

Fragment of a Samian bowl, burned black in the Boudican firing of Londinium, the heat of which has been estimated to have been in excess of 1,000°C.

Skulls, dating from the early Roman period, found in the bed of the Walbrook river – possibly the heads of victims of the Boudican massacre, in view of Celtic tribal practice and the ritual significance of the head in the Celtic religion.

The Boudican firing of Londinium in AD 60, illustrated by Richard Sorrell, from the Museum of London; a red layer, about 13 feet below the streets of the modern City of London, still attests to the fierceness of the holocaust.

Two impressions of the Britons’ last battle against the Romans: a realistic recreation by Alan Sorrell, from the Museum of London,

An illustration to Holinshed’s Chronicles of 15 77, showing Boadicea and her ladies in Tudor dress faced by Romans in helmets and doublets, armed with guns.

Images of Boadicea.
    Illustration to Thomas Heywood’s Exemplary Lives of 1640 showing her in the Caroline court dress of the period, with plumed headdress and one breast exposed, the tore having become a pearl necklace with a cross, and the spear a baton.

Engraving of the ‘Thrice Happy Princess’ by W. Fairthorne; an illustration to Aylett Sammes’ Britannia Antiqua lllustrata of 1676.

‘Boadicea haranguing the Britons’ by H. C. Selous ( c . 1840); the Queen’s ill-treated daughters can be seen in a fainting condition at her feet.

The Pageant of Great Women , performed to call attention to the suffragette cause in 1909 at the Scala Theatre by fifty-two actresses, designed and directed by Edith Craig; from left to right, Joan of Arc, Boadicea, the Rani of Jhansi, and (standing on the steps) Agnes Dunbar. A contemporary photograph from the Daily Mirror .

Canossa in 1077; Countess Matilda of Tuscany extends a supplicating hand to Pope Gregory vn, on behalf of the kneeling, penitent Emperor Henry iv; from Donizo’s contemporary Vita Mathildis .

The tomb of Countess Matilda in St Peter’s, Rome, with a Latin inscription comparing her to the Amaon leader: ‘this warrior-woman disposed her troops as … Penthesilea is accustomed to do’.

A nineteenth-century Belgian evocation of the scene at Canossa,