Visualising Roman London by Caroline Lawrence

The historical novels I love to read (and hopefully write) transport me to the past. They make me hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. Most of all, they make me SEE the past. As a visual thinker that is what is what I crave most.

When I wrote my Roman Mysteries set in Ancient Rome, I had the ruins of Ostia and Pompeii to inspire me, along with the well-preserved frescoes, sculptures and mosaics, and all the art and movies that attempt to envision those places. I know Pompeii better than I know cities on America's east coast. 

When I was writing my P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries, set in Nevada in 1862, I found that photography had been invented just in time to let me look into the past. There were even stereographic photographs that let me gaze into canyons, along railway lines and over the roofs of Virginia City at exactly the times my books were set.

Now I’m working on a book set in Roman Britain during the last decade of the first century. Pre-Trajanic Londinium is not as well-preserved as Pompeii or as well-documented that Virginia City in the 1860s. Scholars are not even sure who the governor of Britannia was in AD 94, the year my book is set.

Luckily, London offers some fabulous resources. The British Museum has rooms devoted to stunning artefacts like the Snettisham hoard and the Vindolanda tablets.

3-D Model of Roman London's port at the Museum of London

The Museum of London (MOL) is even better. Not only does it have bits of the original Roman wall poking up around it, but it has replica Roman rooms, street scenes, delicious artefacts and 3-D models of Londinium’s port and forum.

Gladiator Games in August 2015, sponsored by the Museum of London

They go above and beyond. The MOL stages gladiatorial combats with dedicated re-enactors like those put on last month. Their archaeologists give regular tours of the underground amphitheatre, hidden bathhouses and Thames foreshore. The tech guys at the MOL have even produced a brilliant app of Londinium with an interactive map: you can ‘dig up’ artefacts, listen to ancient street sounds and watch ancient Romans superimposed on modern streets.

Mudlarking with Museum of London archaeologist September 2015

But as I was making a pass over my second draft of my Roman Britain book last week, I wasn’t seeing it.

For me to write something clearly enough for nine-year-olds to get it, I have to get it first. And I was confused. How did the north bank differ from the south? When were the city walls built again? How extensive were the wharves? What was the main building material? What did Londinium look like?

Then I stumbled across a wonderful resource on the Museum of London’s website: the paintings of Alan Sorrell. It was just what I needed: postcards of the world I was writing. Bird’s eye views of the streets and buildings. Inspired vignettes of daily life with great attention to archaeological and historical detail.

A commercial artist who worked in many mediums and on many projects, Alan Sorrell (1904 – 1974) first studied art at Southend and later at the RCA in London and Rome. He spent WWII in the air force. After the war he worked closely with some of the most respected archaeologists of the day. His 'neo-Romantic' training accounts for the often moody lighting of his work. His time with the RAF is reflected in his fondness for aerial views. And his attention to historical detail attests his collaboration with scholars.

London's Praetorium by Alan Sorrell, via the Museum of London

An atmospheric watercolour of London’s Praetorium (Governor's Palace) shows all the features mentioned by Peter Marsden, its excavator. This is one of Londinium’s lesser-known but great buildings (now totally covered by Cannon Street Station.) As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be the setting for a key scene at the heart of my book. With Sorrell’s illustration alongside the sparse archaeological plan and dry written accounts of this structure, I can now write a believable setting for my scene.

Sorrell’s watercolour of the wells beside the Walbrook reminded me to include rubbish heaps in my Londinium. His red-painted goose-neck on theBlackfriars barge encouraged me to add more colour. His aerial view of Londonin the time of Hadrian prompted me to check whether London Bridge had a drawbridge in the mid 90s. The answer is we don’t know, so I’ll have to use my instincts.

Like authors of historical fiction, archaeological artists also need to use flashes of creative instinct when fleshing out the dry bones of the facts. In a preliminary sketch of 3rd century Londinium, Sorrell felt he should give the Roman city a river wall. A notation on his sketch shows that he was asked to remove it for the final painting as there were no remains of such a wall. His theory was justified however, when a few months after his death evidence of a riverside wall was indeed found.

Sorrell’s diligently researched and inspired paintings have finally helped me ‘get’ Roman London.

I am grateful to his family and fans who have made his work available to the world. 

A superb paper on his life and output has been made publicly available on Academia. 

Escape from Rome, the first of four books in The Roman Quests, a new Roman British series by Caroline Lawrence, will be out in May 2016. 

Numinous by Caroline Lawrence

numinous
(adj) having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.
e.g. “the strange, numinous beauty of this ancient landmark”

Sunset at Lake Tahoe, California

I am fascinated by the numinous, that is to say by places or incidents where people have had a positive experience of something spiritual or supernatural without looking for it. 

The word numen is Latin. It means a nodding of the head. Later it came to mean a nodding of Jupiter’s head in approval and thus: divine will. Today we use the adjective numinous to mean a positive sense of god’s presence in a place or situation. 

I have been surprised by the numinous twice in my life. (I’m not counting church or church-related events where my whole being is focused on the spiritual.)

Sacre Coeur at Night

The first time was when I was 19, backpacking around Europe on my gap year. My friend and I went into Sacre Coeur Church in Montmartre one night. It was candlelit and there might have been people singing. I can’t recall. But what I do remember is being surprised by something I couldn’t identify. I felt a presence: a kind, loving, benevolent presence. At that point in my life I considered myself an atheist but I’d been inside many churches and never felt anything like this in any of them. I was actually surprised to sense something beautiful, enlightened, spiritual. 

The next time I was surprised by the numinous was about ten years after I had converted to Christianity. But I wasn’t in church and I wasn’t looking for it. I had been travelling around Turkey with my ten-year-old son, a fellow scholar and two female grad students. One afternoon the grad students and my son and I took a taxi up into the hills near Ephesus on the spur of the moment. They wanted to see the a place called Meryem Ana where Mary the mother of Jesus was supposed to have spent the last years of her life. The site was reputed to be very scenic so my son and I tagged along.

Mary's House near Ephesus in Turkey

I wasn’t expecting anything, but as I stepped out of the taxi into the late afternoon light I felt something envelop me. The word that springs to mind is bittersweet. It was like being bathed in a strong yet subtle poignancy. Tears sprang to my eyes and everything seemed intensely beautiful. It was so unexpected that I said to the others, ‘Do you feel that?’ That sad, tender presence stayed with me strongly the whole time we were there. 

I returned to Mary’s House near Ephesus a few years ago. It was still beautiful and peaceful, but this time I didn’t feel a presence as intensely as I did that afternoon two decades previously. 

Was my first experience at Maryem Ana shrine just the result of a chance combination of afternoon light, jet lag and whatever hormones were present in my body at that time? Maybe. Maybe not. 

I often ask people if they have ever experienced the sense of something other, something divine, without looking for it. 

Some people say they have never felt anything like that. But many others have. They tell me about a place – often a place of beauty – where they have sensed God’s presence, or the presence of something beyond this world.

path through a forest

Once the wife of the head teacher at a school in Herefordshire was driving me back to the train station after an author event. I asked her if she had ever experienced the numinous and she told me about just such an experience. She was walking her two dogs on a country footpath when she felt a sort of power surge up from the grassy earth into her feet. The sensation was so unexpected, so strange, that she froze where she was. She felt connected to everything, not just the earth but the trees and shrubs. She lost sense of time. She might have stood there for seconds, minutes or even hours before she came to herself. ‘Did the dogs sense it, too?’ I asked. She laughed. ‘Oh, no. They were bounding around, oblivious.’

Story told in a night time taxi...

Another time I was being taken back from a library sleepover event and I raised this topic with the taxi driver. He told me about the most amazing mind-out-of-body experience he experienced one night. In a dream, his uncle came to him and took him flying around the world, showing him the places from his (the uncle’s) life. ‘It was unlike any dream I have ever had before,’ he said. ‘It seemed to go on for days and days,’ he said. ‘Everything about it seemed so real.’ 

‘It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ I said. ‘Captain Picard gets zapped by a beam and lives a whole life on another planet, but when they bring him back only a few minutes have passed on the Enterprise. He remembers everything, including how to play a flute.’ 

‘I know that episode,’ he said. ‘My experience was very much like that. I told my wife about my dream as soon as I woke up, but she scoffed. Later that day,’ he added, ‘my mother phoned to say my uncle had passed away the previous night.’

Camilla in the numinous woods of Laurentum

There is a line from Jane Eyre that I love: Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere... 
One of the best parts of being a writer is that I have a good excuse to ask people about their experiences of the numinous. If you have had any, please share them in the comments section below. 

Caroline Lawrence is author of historical fiction for middle grade students: The Roman Mysteries, The P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries and The Night Raid. Her next project is a Barrington Stoke book about Virgil's Warrior Queen, Camilla, followed by a new series called The Roman Quests, set in Roman Britain. It will probably include Druids.