This highly readable account of the Roman conquest and occupation of Britain seeks to synthesise recent work on classical literary references to the island with the much larger body of archaeological and epigraphic research on Roman Britain. Dedicated in memoriam Anthony Birley, it is underpinned by Birley's The Roman Government of Britain (2005) and Roger Tomlin's Britannia Romana (2017), while also owing much of its approach to John Creighton's work on the province. Drawing extensively on material evidence enables it to bridge somewhat the disciplinary gap between studies of Iron Age and Roman Britain, particularly for southern England but also the North and Scotland. Hingley's focus is on Rome's generals and emperors to ‘return attention to the military acts and political decisions that led to the conquest itself’ (p. viii), as such updating traditional perspectives on Rome's invasion and occupation. The volume, however, covers the entirety of Roman activity in the province, also including brief chapters on the post-Roman period and later reception of Roman Britain.

Hingley argues that successive Roman leaders saw the conquest of Britain as a religious as well as a military objective. Campaigning on an island set within the sacred waters of Ocean was elevated to a ‘magical’ act that emperors could use to increase their personal power through ‘self-deification’ (p. 4). More discussion of these arguments could have been included, as could the political implications for emperors faced with either maintaining the boundaries of the Empire established by Augustus, which stopped at the Rhine and the Danube, or choosing to campaign across the Ocean. Nevertheless, it is an interesting variation on the now standard explanation of conquest and occupation being driven by Roman aggression. Taking a chronological approach allows Hingley to convey effectively the intertwining of Iron Age elite strategies and Roman military leaderships, particularly for southern Britain and Gaul where attempts can be made to match individuals named in Roman literary sources with coin inscriptions and, occasionally, with inscriptions on stone.

The book is aimed at a general reader seeking a straightforward history of personages and events. Trading relationships receive little consideration, as do the traders and camp followers accompanying the army, although a section is included on Vindolanda, and there is discussion, for example, of Barates and Regina at South Shields. Taking a broad historical scope means the rich complexities of the primary evidence and the histories shaping its interpretation cannot be fully discussed, as Hingley acknowledges. However, although the quantity of evidence overall supports the broad thrust of the narrative, individual cases do not always incontrovertibly support claims made. Ambiguities are not always made clear and important contradictory evidence is also sometimes omitted. For example, the evidence from Maiden Castle does not prove that it was attacked by Vespasian (p. 82) – a traditional explanation first expounded by Mortimer Wheeler – but can, as Miles Russell has argued, suggest the site had been largely abandoned as military, political and economic centre before the first century c.e. and was then re-used (or taken over) by the Durotriges as a cemetery. Although osteological evidence suggests those inhumed were victims of violent conflicts, specific episodes varied greatly in date and the weaponry used may not be Roman. Redfern's osteological re-analysis of adult females buried at Maiden Castle shows they received perimortem weapon injuries, the pattern of their injuries differed to those of the adult males, and this cemetery's evidence may also be atypical for Dorset. It cannot prove whether or not Durotrigian ‘women fought in armed contexts alongside men’ (p. 83), although they certainly were present and among the victims.

Difficulties of inscriptional evidence are likewise underplayed. For example, Tomlin suggests in RIB that a part-preserved epitaph (RIB 3364) might be a cenotaph. He connects this with Pliny's tale of a haunting laid to rest by a proper funeral to illustrate Roman motivations for providing epitaphs. Hingley extends this plausible conjecture to portray soldierly comrades who could not recover the body and, being afraid of their fallen friend's ghost, then put up an inscription (p. 199). What survives of the text, however, states that the soldier's son and other heirs, conceivably freedmen and women, were responsible for the monument. The problems of fragmentary RIB 1051 are similarly undiscussed (p. 213).

There are some minor irritations – Diodorus Siculus’ Library of History and Statius’ Silvae are referred to but not listed under ancient authors’ works in the bibliography. Inscription numbers are not always given in endnotes. These are minor flaws in what is overall a reasonably priced, engaging and useful volume for a general reader wanting to know what most probably happened.