All posts tagged: Hadrian’s Wall

Borderlands and frontiers part 2: Historical

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Last week I looked at the borderlands in the fantasy genre, the contested boundaries that have been immortalised by writers.  This week I want to look at the borderlands in our own world, and look back into history to find the lands along borders that can be a great place to set a historical novel. picture: thewardrobedoor.com Greece – Asia Minor. 1200 BC to AD 334 Some of the most famous settings for the great scenes of classical world took place on Greece’s border with her neighbour.  Agamemnon’s siege of Troy, when the King of Kings led all the nations of Greece against the great city to its ultimate downfall.  Then a few hundred years later, you have the Persians being held up at the pass of Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, before Xerses can lay ruin to the Greek mainland.  Finally you have Alexander the Great going back the other way and landing in Asia Minor and defeating the Persian Satraps at the battle of Granicus.  Literally thousands of books have been …

A final walk along the Wall and then home…

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Just a short post today, as I’ll be driving back from Northumberland today as it’s the end of my holiday.  It’s been a fantastic trip, staying in my old cottage, surrounded by history and the beautiful countryside of the area.  I even made it back to Hadrian’s Wall on Friday, after my first trip needed to be aborted due a heavy downpour of rain.  This time the weather was much kinder I had a fantastic walk between Steel Rigg and Housesteads. This section of the Wall shows the remains of a few of the mile-castles that were evenly spaced along the Wall, and each housed around thirty men.  I know it doesn’t appear that that much is left of the mile-castle in the picture, but when the Wall was in active use it would have stood at fifteen feet high, with battlements and a walkway all along the Wall, with three turrets or watchtowers interspersed between each mile-castle.  As you can see from the rocky and craggy countryside, that was no small building achievement along …

Walking along the Wall and through History…

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This may be my last Sunday update for a while, as I will be driving up to Northumberland next Sunday so I doubt I’ll be able to write my normal Sunday post.  I am very fortunate that my family own a small cottage up in the Nortumbrian hills, somewhere I can go to write, relax, and a be inspired. Anyone familiar with this beautiful part of England will know that Hadrian ’s Wall runs through the county.  It one of Rome’s most famous engineering projects and not only divided the British Isles but also continued to shape its history long after the Roman’s left our shores.  Would England and Scotland have developed separately without the Romans dividing their lands before either nation existed?  Who knows, but I doubt it.  Either way, it is an amazing example of their ambition, as well as their military and engineering might. George R R Martin says it was whilst visiting Hadrian’ Wall that he started to form the idea for the Wall that divided Westeros in his magnificent Game …