Feb 07 2025

Book review: Roads in Roman Britain by Hugh Davies

My next review is of Roads in Roman Britain by Hugh Davies. Davies was a road engineer, and the study of Roman roads is a retirement project for him, which amused me since I am currently contemplating retirement. I don’t mean this pejoratively – I think in Roads he did a great job bringing together his expertise and the existing academic work in the area, as well as his own original research. He gained a PhD in 2001 from Reading University. In addition he has compiled a database of Roman road characteristics which is exactly my sort of thing.

The book starts with some basic definitions of what a road is and how it is structured. Davies focusses on the function of the road as a transport mechanism rather than as a boundary indicator, a navigation system or an expression of Roman power – uses I hadn’t really considered. As a structure a road has a route and a cross-section. I liked the quote from John London McAdam which basically said the function of the road cross-section was to stop the running surface becoming unusable as a result of water coming from above or below!

There is very limited primary documentary evidence for the Roman roads of Britain, there is the Antonine Iternary, tables of routes across the Roman empire which includes some routes in Britain and the Peutiger Tables, a sort of pseudo-map of roads across the Roman Empire of which Britain is only covered in a small fragment showing the far south east of the country.

This leaves us with archaeology, fortunately Roman roads in Britain have been excavated for many years. Less fortunately dating evidence is sparse in roads. Some roads identified as Roman may well date to medieval or even the 17th century when the turnpike roads were the first to match the quality of construction of Roman roads. It’s worth noting that none of the names used for Roman roads (Watling Street, Ermine Street, the Foss Way etc) are original – they are labels dating to the medieval period at earliest. It is not clear if Romans used any sort of naming for roads.

Archaeological practices have improved over the years, it is only really in the last quarter of the 20th century that it was appreciated that Roman roads are structures that were repaired and reconstructed over centuries.

I think the most interesting idea in this book Davis’s proposal for a reason for the straightness of Roman roads. He argues, unlike others, that the Roman’s must have made some sort of map before laying out roads and that the likelihood was that this was some large scale object possibly inscribed onto a floor. Under these circumstances straight road segments are the easiest to transmit to “the field”. It is easy to say “go to this point, build a straight road in this direction until you have gone this distance”, imagine trying to describe a more complex route accurately.

One of the recurring themes of the book is as to whether the Romans built roads to a strict pattern in terms of construction details and width. Justinian codified road classifications in the 6th century AD; an iter is pedestrian only, actus will allow a beast of burden, via will allow a cart however no numerical widths were defined. The Twelve Tables from fifth century BC says a straight section of road must be 8 pedes (Roman feet) wide on the straight an 16 on corners. However, on the ground road widths follow quite a broad distribution with a peak around 20 pedes (which is about six metres). This is wide enough for two-way cart traffic.

Based on the road surface (crushed stone/gravel) and the maximum gradients Davies suggests that Roman roads were designed for heavy carts moving at walking pace rather than fast passenger carriages. I was interested to learn the optimum gradients for carts are based on the rolling resistance of the surface balancing gravity (which becomes larger for steeper slopes). This is to avoid runaway carts since braking technology at the time was poor.

In the past historians have tended to the view that the Romans worked in a very regimented fashion. Davies comes down on the side of a more flexible approach determined by local factors. This is complicated in the archaeological record by repair and reconstruction activities, in some places there is evidence for 9 or 10 cycles of repair/reconstruction – sometimes this is as an addition on top of an older road but sometimes it is a widening of the route.

Davies observes that there is a difference in construction methods between the north and west of the country and the south and east with the north and west making greater use of stone. He attributes this to much more significant military use in the north and west, and better availability of suitable stone.

There is a chapter on Roman town plans which looked like it could be a whole separate book. Roman towns are typically built on a grid sometimes this grid is based around a Roman road alignment – suggesting road predates town and sometimes the road deviates to adapt to the town grid, suggesting town predates road.

Davies covers fairly briefly the development of the network over time, in terms of the military function of roads. The Royal Engineers estimated that the initial road from a Kent invasion landing point to London would have taken 1000 men about 15 weeks, a full version would take 3400 men about 3 years. The Roman road system was not fully developed until into the 2nd century AD – some 60 or so years after the invasion. London was not the transport centre of Britain at the beginning of the Roman occupation but became so over time.

This book is somewhat specialist, I enjoyed it because I’m interested in civil engineering and Roman history. It is short and readable, and I think provides a unique perspective.

Jan 29 2025

Game Review: Black Myth Wukong

In a break from usual service I am reviewing a “computer game”, Black Myth Wukong by Game Science Interactive Technology. I started gaming in the early eighties when I was an early teenager, I think there was a bit of a break when I went to university then I continued into my early thirties (around 2000). There was then a pause until a while after my son was born, we got a PlayStation 5 in Christmas 2021 “for him”.

Since then my favourite games have been Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Lies of P and Ghost of Tsushima. I bought Black Myth Wukong with my Christmas money – a child once again! In common with my other favourite games it falls into the category of “action role-playing” game.

Black Myth Wukong is based on Journey to the West, a 16th century Chinese novel which I know from an eighties TV series which I remember by its short name “Monkey”. In the game you play the part of “the Destined One” (a monkey) whose task is to retrieve the six relics of Sun Wukong.

The action takes place over 6 chapters, it is closest in style to Lies of P, that’s to say the chapters involve a roughly linear path with battles with minor characters who respawn and bosses who you must defeat to progress. Defeating a character brings rewards, “will” which is the unit of progress used to upgrade your character and buy upgrades and consumables and also items. Fighting is action rather than turn based. Your weapons are a trusty staff (which can be replaced and upgraded through the games), and various spells which fall into several categories: active spells, defensive spells, transformations, spirits, vessels. There’s a huge range of spells and so forth to choose from. My favourite is “Pluck of Many” which summons a posse of replica monkeys to fight for you (but only for a brief period).

Black Myth uses the traditional trifecta of health, stamina and some consumable spell substance (Mana in this case) to indicate your current status. A couple of vessels and spirits are tied to a second mystical substance, Qi and spells have a cooldown period so you have to wait to use them again. Health is recovered by drinking from your gourd which contain a variety of upgradable drinks and “soaks” which have various effects. I think it’s best to think of the “soaks” as teabags! You can also collect a variety of modifying relics which can be equipped to boost various characteristics.

I liked the upgrade and progress mechanics, there are extensive skill trees but you can re-allocate “sparks” freely at the save points (shrines). Dying does not lose your accumulated will, which is an irritating feature of Elden Ring and similar. I have died futilely so many times in Elden Ring attempting to retrieve my accumulated experience points.

The graphics in Black Myth are stunning, a step above even Elden Ring and Lies of P which are excellent. This will be down, in part, to Unreal Engine 5. The chapters also have quite different visual styles – the first chapter, set on Black Wind Mountain is lush forest, the second Yellow Wind Ridge is scorched desert, the third the New West is snowy mountains, the fourth The Webbed Hollow is a creepy, cavernous underground environment, the fifth Flaming Mountains is a scorched volcanic moonscape, the final chapter Mount Huaguo is a mountainous, forested open world. In addition there are a couple of “secret” areas which are accessed by completing quest lines. The gameplay also varies a bit with chapter with some chapters like Yellow Wind Ridge and The Web Hollow feeling close to open world.

Your enemies are well-designed and have a very wide range of attacks, your own spells are very varied and both are rendered beautifully. I found the dodging animations particularly satisfying. I thought the in-game dialogue and interactions with characters was pretty good. Games Science is a Chinese studio and were a couple of places where translation seemed slightly odd (I’m thinking of the “non-white” and “non-able” bosses).

There is no difficulty level selection, so if you are struggling with a boss to progress then you have to “git gud” which is sometimes a pain. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of those most challenging bosses are amenable to tactics which you simply need to find rather than being straightforward battles of skill and reflex. Fall damage is not an issue until it is, in parts of Chapter 3! There is very limited parrying in Black Myth, which some will miss.

I got about a month of play out of Black Myth for the first run through, amounting to 98 hours gameplay but there is New Game+ to play and a couple of challenge features where you can refight bosses, this is well used to beat those foes that you first struggled with early in the game.

Overall I loved Black Myth Wukong, I can’t wait for the rumoured DLC

Jan 26 2025

Book review: The Teenager’s Guide to Burnout by Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker

I recently reviewed Understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome in Children, this book follows that theme – I’m reviewing The Teenager’s Guide to Burnout by Dr Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker. The Teenager’s Guide is a far easier read, directed at teenagers rather than adults although it includes a section at the end for adults.

Dr Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist well-known for her work on the mental health of children, parenting and schooling. She experienced many different schools in different countries as a result of her parents’ life-style. Eliza Fricker is an illustrator and author and has experience of the issues covered in the book and drew the illustrations.

The book starts with some generally comments about stress and burnout which could apply to anyone, it’s useful in setting the scene although I did worry whether I’d got the right book. Perhaps surprisingly the book doesn’t mention “autistic burnout” except in the final section for adults where Fisher says that burnout is burnout, some children are neurodivergent but that’s not the key feature.

The action quickly moves on to school which in general is what will cause burnout in teenagers. The process of burnout is divided into four sections:

  1. Breakdown – burnout often seems to come out of the blue, a child is “fine at school” and then suddenly can no longer go in. It is traumatic for parents as well as children. Fisher (rightly) attributes this largely to the school environment and emphasises that a return to school should not be the short term gaol. This stage is about re-connecting with the child, it turns out our family sessions of Fortnite were actually a pretty good thing to do!;
  2. Repair – this is when we start to find the new normal with a child at home not at school, and a family rearranged to accommodate. There is often sadness here at the life apparently lost. This stage is about the teenager trying to find some enjoyment in life;
  3. Learning from the journey – this is about learning about what went wrong; why was it that school became unbearable? Sometimes as parents we will discover that our well meaning efforts were just pressuring our child and worsening the problem. I think of our efforts to get our son to see a counsellor here;
  4. The Road Ahead – this is about finding another path to education, outside of mainstream school. Part of the current process is, typically, to pressure children by telling them that mainstream school is the only option and they will be a failure if they don’t attend. Fisher describes it as a myth, really it is an outright lie;

Fisher believes that a key mistake most people make is to see a return to mainstream school as the goal throughout this process. If an adult had a burnout as a result of a high stress job we probably wouldn’t see going back to that job as the goal. She sees the school environment as being the problem which reflects the WHO recognition of burnout as an “occupational phenomena”. She cites increasingly high pressure methods used in schools to control behaviour (see SLANT), enforce attendance (“your parents will be fined and may go to prison if you don’t go to school”) and recover the academic progress lost during the pandemic. I have to say I agree with all of this.

Fisher is scathing about schools, pointing out her experience of so many different school systems highlights which school rules are in fact unnecessary she mentions UK uniform rules and the UK tradition of calling teachers “Sir and Miss” as examples of this. The world doesn’t end if you don’t wear a school uniform and address your teachers by their first name.

Fisher says a little about why burnout is an increasing problem, some of it is changes in the world – particularly the pandemic. She mentions world events like climate change meaning there is little to hope for in the future, as a child of the seventies and eighties I can say there is no change there – we feared nuclear annihilation! She says that in the past those suffering from burnout might have been diagnosed as having glandular fever or simply truants. It strikes me that in the past twenty years or so we have been become (on the face of it) much more understanding of mental health issues in adults but we don’t extend that sympathy to children.

I found her comments on friends and social development interesting, one of the key worries of those educating at home is the lack of social interactions. However, Fisher points out that frequently younger children have a quite limited social circle covering only family and relatives. Friendship at secondary schools has the air of protection, being in with a group so you are not alone at lunch time or the school gate, not the target of bullying. That said she provides a long list of venues outside school where teenagers might find new friends.

I suspect this book will be mainly read by parents; teenagers in the process of burnout are likely only receptive to it at stage 4 (The Road Ahead). The best time for an adult to get this book would be prior to stage 1, perhaps when the first signs of issues at school appear but it is useful at any time in the process. I heartily wish no one needed this book.

The Teenager’s Guide is great: for affirming we are not alone, for providing reassurance and also for providing some strategies to try for a better future. Although it is purportedly written for teenagers it is fine for adults, making for an easy read with short recaps at the end of each chapter. There are some handy tables / exercises which also act as summaries.

Jan 24 2025

Book review: An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi

My next review is of An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi. On this topic I read Precolonial Black Africa by Cheikh Anta Diop a few years ago. Badawi’s book was a chance discovery at the library – published in 2024. I know Badawi as a newsreader in the UK, she was born in Khartoum in the Sudan but moved to Britain aged 2. She is one of the Africans of the title but more generally she interviewed many African scholars in writing this book.

An African History makes a tour of Africa in broadly chronological fashion, starting with the earliest humans but moving quickly to the area around the Nile in the time of the ancient Egyptians finishing with the liberation struggles of the second half of the 20th century. The 17 chapters are typically named for the areas they cover, some like “Slavery and Salvation” are thematic but typically tied to a region. There are too many chapters for me to comment on each one so I try to provide a thumbnail sketch of the whole here.

There are some recurring themes in the book, the first is reference to the UNESCO General History Africa project – a much longer version of this book in some senses.

In contrast to Britain it feels like groups of people in Africa were more mobile with groups moving around the continent and resettling, also land ownership seems not to have been a common practice.

Badawi writes a little about how the sources for African history are typically accounts written by outsiders such as Arabic scholars, or European traders/slavers. Many of these sources need to be read in light of justification for the actions of their authors either slavery or colonisation. That said the spread of Islam across West Africa and down the Eastern coast of Africa would mean that written language was available from a relatively early date. African sources are typically based on oral traditions which do not have high standing with Western historians. The First Astronomers by Duane Hamacher talked about the power of oral traditions in transmitting information over thousands of years.

South of the Sahara archaeology has been neglected, and in Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia) very actively supressed.

Once the preliminaries of the dawn of humanity are covered the action moves to ancient Egypt, the Kingdom of Kush, Aksum and Ethiopia – all in the North East of Africa covering the modern day states and Sudan. European historians have often written about Egypt as “not African”, as if somehow such an advanced civilisation could not possibly be African (specifically Black). Ancient Egypt persisted from around 3000BC until 330BC when it was invaded by Alexander the Great. The Kingdom of Kush in present day Sudan arose at approximately the same time, when the area was cooler and wetter, and did not fall until the 4th century AD.

Further west along the North African coast we find the Carthaginians fighting the Punic Wars against the Roman Empire a couple of hundred years BC. They were a much more sophisticated society at that time than the Britons that Rome would later invade. Africa gets its name from Ifrikiya, the Roman name for the region. In common with many places North African communities were not uniform in their opposition to Rome some sided with them against other local groups.

Arabs entered Egypt in 639AD, a year after the death of the Prophet Mohammad. They were “semi-welcomed” by the Egyptian populace, the Byzantine rulers had not been great and the native Coptic Church was dominated by the Orthodox Church. From there they spread across North Africa rapidly, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar to take Spain in 711AD.

Sub-Saharan West Africa gets a few outings, firstly with Mansa Musa, leader of the Mali Empire 1312 – c. 1337 and reputedly the richest man to every live, primarily derived from the gold mined in the region. The Mali Empire was followed by the Ghana empire – 600-1235AD and then by the Songhay Empire 1435-1592. Further East there was Benin. These empires do not follow the boundaries of the modern countries who take their names, those were the invention of 19th century colonialists. Also in this area were the Asante. These were large sophisticated societies with complex trading and impressive metalworking, not clusters of mud huts.

The traffic of Africans across the Atlantic in the “triangle trade” is well-known. Less well-known is the Indian Ocean slave trade which had been run by Arab traders from 7th to 19th century with approximately 14 million African slaves traded into Arabia. Interestingly an African view of the end of slavery was that it ultimately came about because the slaving nations started to see that African labour was more useful in Africa than across the Atlantic. This culminates in the “Scramble for Africa” in the late 19th century. Africans also viewed the transatlantic slavery (hard labour with a life expectancy of 7 or 8 years) as far worse than “local” slavery. The local impact of slavery was large, a significant fraction of the particularly young adult male population was trafficked and since slaves were often initially captured by neighbouring African groups levels of suspicion between communities rose – slavery casts a long shadow.

Southern Africa covering present day South Africa and Zimbabwe is covered last in the geographic tour. Originally a stopping point for the Dutch East India company ships heading out to the Far East, it was taken over by the British in 1806. It attracted many white settlers who took land for agriculture with wool a primary export in the first instance followed by diamonds in the late 19th century. Zimbabwe and South Africa were the last countries to gain independence – Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 was one of my earliest political memories.

The book ends with the “Scramble for Africa” where European states divided up the continent in the 1884 Berlin Conference, control of Africa “passed” from African to European hands almost entirely between 1870 and 1890. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness captures this period – he says it represents “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration”.

At the time there was some armed resistance, generally overcome quite promptly by superior weaponry such as the Maxim gun. Independence happened after the Second World War, Badawi gives the impression that this process was generally peaceful – I’m not sure that is true. Large scale participation in the world wars by African soldiers drove a desire for independence, as it drove a desire for equality for Black British people at home. The US did not favour its European allies imperialist tendencies, and the colonies became too expensive to maintain after the destruction of the Second World War. The great powers were happy to interfere in the independence process though, the French destroyed much infrastructure as they left Guinea and the Americans with the Belgians backed a coup that deposed the independence leader Patrice Lumumba amongst many other examples.

Badawi ends with a positive note, talking about African as a continent whose population has an average age of 19, taking up new technologies rapidly. It is still blighted by poor government in places but things are improving.

I’m glad I picked this book up, I found it well-written and readable. It provides a great overview of African history with a different perspective to most of what I have read before.

Jan 20 2025

Book review: Understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome in Children by Phil Christie, Margaret Duncan, Ruth Fidler and Zara Healey

Today I open up a new strand of reviews with Understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome in Children by Phil Christie, Margaret Duncan, Ruth Fidler and Zara Healey. This is for reasons I alluded to in my review of 2024.

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is a condition first identified in children being evaluated for autism by Elizabeth Newson in the late 1970s.

The core of the PDA diagnosis is the idea that demands of a child causes them anxiety which results in a range of responses around refusing those demands, and developing strategies to avoid demand. This is a problem because often the child will refuse “demands” that would lead to things they wanted to do for example “Please put your shoes on so that we can go to the zoo” – “No!”. It also makes education and everyday life challenging.

The term did not enter the literature until around 2000, and its use has grown substantially since 2012 (see Google Ngram). This book was written around 2012. The current professional opinion on PDA appears to be that is a recordable trait for neurodivergence assessments but it is not a standalone diagnosis.

Understanding PDA is divided into 6 chapters:

  1. What is PDA?
  2. Positive Everyday Strategies – this is about managing PDA in the classroom;
  3. Living with PDA – this is about managing PDA at home;
  4. Providing the Best education for a child with PDA;
  5. Developing emotional well-being and self-awareness in children with PDA;
  6. Summing up and questions for the future;

The chapter “What is PDA?” is about diagnosis, it lists a set of diagnostic criteria and provides some examples of what these criteria look life in action. The criteria proposed for PDA are:

  1. Passive early history in the first year;
  2. Resists and avoids the ordinary demands of life;
  3. Surface sociability – sociability is used as a tool to avoid demands;
  4. Liability of mood;
  5. Comfortable in role playing and pretending;
  6. Language delay;
  7. Obsessive behaviour;
  8. Neurological involvement;

It places PDA alongside autism spectrum conditions broadly divided into “able autism” and “autism with additional learning disabilities”. Reading this I realised my son had some elements of the diagnosis but not many, I also noted that typically the children considered in this book were of primary school age – 5-10 years old. It was also a salutary reminder that our son’s behaviour is fairly mild, one parent reported being threatened by their 8 year old son with a knife! This was not the only example of violent behaviour in children.

Many parents reading this will be asking themselves whether their child fits this diagnosis, and many will be looking at the criteria and realising that they have at least some elements themselves. This presents issues in management of the condition but also provides valuable insights.

As someone with a background in physical sciences my predisposition is to see a diagnosis such as PDA as a concrete undisputable thing. However, it is better to see such diagnoses as a conversation opening to help discuss strategies for living with a child with PDA. The following chapters cover strategies for dealing with a child with PDA at home and in school. The strategies they come up with are as follows:

  1. Reducing demands;
  2. Disguising demands;
  3. Distraction;
  4. Offering choices;
  5. Ignoring undesirable behaviour;
  6. Flexibility and adaptability – learning to be willing to change plans;
  7. Depersonalising demands – a routine depersonalises demands;
  8. Staying calm and neutral – shouting can raise the “excitement” for a child, and so is something that might be sought;
  9. Dealing with bedtime difficulties – fortunately we don’t have these – they’re clearly a common problem;

This seems like an important section to read – it recognises that parents are not perfect and need to develop their own coping strategies. Parents also find themselves wondering where they went wrong to end in this position (they didn’t go wrong), and also feeling guilty for losing their tempers (which is common and natural). It also highlights that the impact of handling a child with PDA on other children including both siblings and class mates. Another lesson is that just because something on one day doesn’t mean it will work on another, the context and the child’s mood is important.

I found the chapter on handling PDA in school environments interesting, not for its relevance directly to me, but because government are keen on the idea of “inclusion” – teaching children on the autistic spectrum in mainstream schools. Reading the accommodations suggested for PDA pupils this seems unworkable, fundamentally because accommodations make a child stand out in a school and for children on the autistic spectrum that is something they definitely don’t want. Secondly, it is difficult to see how such approaches can be accommodated in class sizes of 30 or so typically found in mainstream schools. The authors comment that in the end success comes to the personal relationship between the child and the adult rather than any particular system.

I don’t think I would recommend this book, it is quite academic in style in a field that is not my own. It has to be seen a bit as a campaigning book for the PDA diagnosis written in 2012, so somewhat out of date. I found the National Autistic Society page on demand avoidance a useful alternative to this book. It provides a short summary of some of the key points in Understanding PDA with better context for the diagnosis’s wider, current relevance.