Books like A history of Roman Britain by Peter Salway

The names of early Germanic warrior-tribes and leaders resound in songs and legends, and the real story of the part they played in transforming the ancient world is no less gripping. Herwig Wolfram's panoramic history spans the great migrations of the Germanic peoples and the rise and fall of their kingdoms between the third and eighth centuries, as they invaded, settled in, and ultimately transformed the Roman Empire. Wolfram's narrative is far from the "decline and fall" interpretation that held sway until recent decades. He describes the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages as a generally unsettled, frequently violent time of decentralization, depopulation, and shifts of power. Byzantium became the only center of the old Roman Empire while the western empire ceased to exist as such. Only the increasing authority of the papacy in the Christian-Catholic world helped Rome survive as an imperial capital for the medieval Frankish kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire. This story, based on Wolfram's sweeping grasp of documentary and archaeological evidence, brings new clarity to a poorly understood period of Western history.

"Britain was within the orbit of Graeco-Roman civilization for at least half a millennium, and for over 350 years part of the political union created by the Roman Empire that encompassed most of Europe and all the countries of the Mediterranean." "Peter Salway's Very Short Introduction to Roman Britain weaves together the results of archaeological investigation and historical scholarship in a rounded and highly readable concise account. He charts the history of Britain from the first invasion under Julius Caesar to the final collapse of the Romano-British way of life in the 5th century A.D."--Jacket.

Charlotte Higgins walks across England, uncovering the Roman world so embedded in the British landscape that it reshapes our understanding of Britain’s past and present.