Britannia: The Failed State: Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain

At its height a complex and wealthy state, by the end of the 4th and beginning of the 5th centuries Roman Britain was at the point of collapse. It was soon replaced by Anglo-Saxon culture which migrated across the North Sea. This absorbing study explores the tensions and conflicts between the various tribal groupings that made up Roman Britain and examines how tribal and political fragmentation could have contributed to its fall. It analyzes Roman Britain not as a unified entity but as a collection of different peoples with a history of long-term conflict, and finds parallels in modern conflicts that provide insight into the missing pieces of this complex period of British history.

Stuart Laycock has an MA in Classics from Jesus College, Cambridge. Since leaving Cambridge he has worked as a writer in advertising and television, but during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo took time out to work as an aid worker there. His particular combination of original research on the end of Roman Britain combined with first-hand experience of the dynamics and consequences of tribal and ethnic conflict is perhaps unique.