THE opportunity to talk about Roman history in a city full of its architecture and remains was enough for Greg Jenner to answer the call to come to Chester.
A public historian, Greg is familiar to many as the host of podcast You’re Dead to Me which combines the country’s top academics with the best comedians to talk about history.
He is an author of multiple books for kids and adults including about Roman Britain Gets Rowdy, Ask a Historian, A Million Years in a Day and Dead Famous, among others.
And he was also the self-professed ‘chief nerd’ on the golden period of Horrible Histories.
He is coming to Chester Town Hall on Saturday, July 4 from 12-1pm to talk about the ‘Chaos of Roman Britain’ as part of the University of Chester’s Festival of Ideas.
Making his second trip to the city, he explained why he is looking forward to coming to Chester to tell the overall story of the Romans in Britain.
“If there’s a city with Roman heritage, I always try to say yes because it makes it so much more exciting for me and hopefully more interesting for the kids and families who come,” he said.
“If I’m talking about my Roman book, hopefully everyone coming into the room then says ‘oh well’ we’ve got that around the corner’.
“They connect the dots and makes it nicer for them so as soon as I was asked I was thrilled to say yes because, as I said, I’ve only been to Chester once before.
“But they have an amazing Roman collection, fantastic Roman archaeology, a great museum and on most days, you’ll see kids marching around with their shields which is great.
“History is everything – it’s sum totality of the human experience and we think there’s 108 billion people since our species evolved 300,000 years ago.
“You can’t tell all those stories so you pick the ones that will grab people.
“On the podcast, we change it up every week and on Horrible Histories, we went where it was funny.
“When I write books, I am looking for what will connect with the audience and for me, the Romans are fascinating.
“They came to and coined ‘Britannia’ – the people of Chester have a natural link back to the Romans because they have walked the walls, been to the museum and gone to school and heard all about it.
“My talk is about the invasion of Britain, first under Julius Caesar – which was a failure – and then by Claudius, and also how long it took them to do it.
“My event is about the chaos of that invasion process which many people think is a couple of years but it’s actually really long.
“Caesar tries in 55BC and he fails but around 90 years later or so, Claudius invades and he succeeds in a matter of days.
“Within a month, he is Emperor of Britain expect he’s not because the conquest takes much, much longer – comfortably 35 years to conquer what we called England and Wales now.
“But then he tries to invade Scotland and that’s a failure but he tries over and over again before Agricola conquers the north of England.
“He probably passed through Chester, but he tried and failed – there were numerous Roman attempts with huge armies – to conquer Scotland.
“Even the conquest of Wales took decades and vast resources.”
Greg gave excellent insight to why Chester is a living example of our Roman past and why it was so important to the ‘chaotic conquest’.
He said: “Chester’s name is literally Latin for castle – castrum.
“It was founded by the Roman 20th legion Valeria Victrix and they were hardcore soldiers with extraordinary experience in not just what we call England but Wales too.
“By mid 70s AD, they are looking for a location where a fort can be built, with a river that you can defend and hold the local area because of the threat of rebellion.
“At the time you had Boudicca who was setting fire to several cities and killing all sorts of massive Roman armies.
“Of course, the Welsh were very good at beating massive Roman armies and then further north in Caledonia (Scotland) who gave the Romans a nightmare.
“The Welsh must have been brilliant but the Romans said that ‘we need to build a massive fort and we need to stick our best legion in it’.
"This process of conquest is not quick – it’s not like the Normans in 1066 who come across and within three years, everything is conquered.
"But the Roman conquest is slow, chaotic with constant resistance, making deals with local kingdoms to play ball for a lovely villa, nice win, a nice toga and have you heard of baths? We’ll give you one of them.
"You can see that in the archaeology – how this military camp changes and evolves in time and becomes a town.
“There’s a gap in our understanding there that I want to get over to the kids but with jokes and humour.
“I talk fast and move my hands a lot and tell jokes and I want to get it over that it was very chaotic from the very start and at the end when it falls apart around 410 when they just leave.”
Greg added that he will be looking to spend time at the event after he has finished and is encouraging visitors to come up for a chat.
He said: “I’ll be there even if they want to go out to grab some food and then come back too.
“I always try to give people as much time as I can to speak to people afterwards.”
To book your ticket, head to festivalofideas.chester.ac.uk/event/chaos-of-roman-britain-with-greg-jenner/
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