The Roads To Rome

Epic and witty ... Fletcher is a thoroughly enjoyable narrator because she peppers her learned prose with wry humour, first-person asides and comparisons between past and present ... The Roads to Rome is a nuanced and perceptive book that interrogates “the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are” -- Tobias Jones * Observer * Roman roads run everywhere, and Fletcher has been on most of them ... It has been her labour of love to crisscross an entire continent ... Fletcher's book is an exemplar of history as travelogue. It presents a familiar panorama - of Europe since antiquity - but from an unfamiliar, even original perspective ... The roads themselves are Fletcher's stars: sources of prosperity but also danger, stages on which to compete for and assert status, vectors of destiny that take men from where they cannot stay to where they must go ... The camaraderie she generates with fellow travellers, dead as well as living, engages and inspires. -- Miles Pattenden * Literary Review * Elegantly plotted … It is no easy task to condense 25 centuries of history into 300 pages and Fletcher, whose area of expertise is Renaissance Europe, rises to the challenge … For modern Grand Tourists, Fletcher’s book will provide an enjoyable distraction when the journey to Rome gets dull -- Patrick Kidd * The Times * Very readable ... these routes are almost a natural part of the landscape. The reader departs the book with a feeling that they have been there for an unimaginable time, travelled on by a cast of vivid characters. It is a compelling image, in an enjoyable book. -- Robert Wright * Financial Times * [A] rich narrative of the long afterlife of Rome's roads -- Michael Prodger * New Statesman *