The Romans in Britain

Howard Brenton

Methuen Drama Modern Classics

The Methuen Drama Modern Plays series has always been at the forefront of modern playwriting and has reflected the most exciting developments in modern drama since 1959. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Methuen Drama, the series was relaunched in 2009 as Methuen Drama Modern Classics, and continues to offer readers a choice selection of the best modern plays.

‘Conjuring up an era that is culturally, as well as historically, remote is a notoriously difficult task, but Mr Brenton achieves it with great skill and effect … Of all the possible responses to the evening ahead that, before it began, I thought I might feel, the only one that never so much flickered across my mind was the one that I actually experienced: The Romans in Britain is a very good play indeed.’

Bernard Levin, The Times

This edition includes a foreword by Samuel West and an introduction by Philip Roberts.

Howard Brenton is a British dramatist, noted for his controversial political plays of the 1970s and 1980s. He became resident dramatist at the Royal Court in 1972, following on from David Hare. His plays include Revenge, Brassneck (a collaboration with David Hare), The Churchill Play, Epsom Downs, The Romans in Britain, Pravda (a collaboration with Hare), Berlin Bertie, Paul, Never So Good, and In Extremis. He also wrote 14 episodes for the TV programme Spooks and has translated many plays into English. In 2011 he won a Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Play for his Anne Boleyn.

Howard Brenton

The Romans in Britain

Foreword by Samuel West
Introduction by Philip Roberts

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Foreword

Samuel West

‘Where the fuck are we?’

As first lines go, it’s one of the best.

When I became Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres, the first play I directed was The Romans in Britain. I wanted to do it for lots of reasons, one of which was that first line. It’s the job of any artistic director to sniff the air and scent what stories need to be told, and asking where the fuck we were seemed the right thing to do at the very beginning of an artistic tenure.

Here’s where we were: it was 2006. We were five years into the war in Afghanistan and three years past the second invasion of Iraq. Images of prisoners being tortured at Abu Ghraib had become world famous. We were still awaiting the publication of the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the shooting by the British army of civil rights protestors and bystanders in Northern Ireland (it eventually appeared in 2010). Being friends with the most powerful empire in the world seemed like good sense, as it does to the Mother in part one of Romans. It wasn’t a time for good taste or safe choices.

The Romans in Britain is huge, messy and beautiful – a play with a smell about it: the smell of the earth. That same earth which