Guest post from Mark "I am Spartacus" Patterson

Of course you've always wanted to see people marching through Nottinghamshire in sandals and togas, haven't you? Good, because later this month a merry band will be doing just that to raise money for Newark's forthcoming new museum and Civil War Centre, which is set to display many of the area's Roman and ancient treasures including the famous gold Iron Age Torc and the Roman cavalry cheekpiece that graces the cover of my Five Leaves book Roman Nottinghamshire. The team will be walking 68 miles from Lincoln to Leicester, basically following the Fosse Way. On June 20 they'll be stopping in Newark to hear a talk by me on the history of the Fosse Way (Newark Town Hall, 7.30pm, £4) and I may be joining them for the walk the day after. Newark hasn't had a decent museum for ages and consequently all the artefacts have been locked up in the town's Resource Centre. 
The Torc itself has been at the British Museum all these years as Newark didn't have facilities deemed good enough to put it on display. Now it's coming home. The best of the 100,000 artefacts found alongside the Fosse Way during the recent dualling work should also be coming to the new museum. Details of the talk can be seen at http://www.civilwarnewark.co.uk/category/news/while the brave walkers can be sponsored via http://localgiving.com/charity/friendsofnewarkandsherwoodmuseumservice.
Note: the picture is not Mark Patterson

We are the Romans...

Five Leaves' Roman Nottinghamshire by Mark Patterson is up for the cup, or, to be more exact, has been shortlisted for the Current Archaeology Book of Year. This is one of those awards that depend on public votes. We disapprove in general as it depends on the Mark Pattersons of this world having large families and larger fan clubs. But there you go - we've voted, and we ask you to vote as well at www.archaeology.co.uk/vote. . There's an interesting research project of the year award too, involving the Iceni run by some folks from Nottingham University. Feel free to lob them a vote too.

Roman Nottinghamshire has turned into something of a hit for us. The book was reprinted a few weeks after publication and has been reprinted again, with a short afterword. We've also been able to correct a quote wrongly attributed... we had not realised there were at least two people working in the same field here with the same name, a bit like the two Duncan Campbells who used to work for The Guardian, with the same writing interests. We'd love to do a full new edition as there has been a glut of new information on Roman Nottinghamshire. People connected with some of the interesting characters involved in local archaeology mentioned in the book have also been in touch. That will have to wait until 2014, and come out alongside a book on Roman Derbyshire, currently being written by Mark. You can order the book here:
http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/roman-nottinghamshire/. Dinarii accepted.

What the papers say

Time for a round up of some recent press Five Leaves press coverage... The Thomas Hardy Society gives some nice coverage to our CD of C. Day-Lewis poems read by Jill Balcon. Both were vice-presidents of the Society. Indeed, both CDL and Jill are buried in Stinsford churchyard as is Hardy. Jill read the poems of both her late husband and Hardy at meetings of the Society and CDL read at the first Thomas Hardy Festival in 1968. Danuta Reah is picking up some coverage online for her Not Safe, the latest being at www.overmydeadbody.com/notsafe.htm. Her crime novella is based round the Sheffield refugee community, while David Belbin (who edited the book) has been interviewed in the Nottingham Post about his Five Leaves' refugee book Secret Gardens. You can read the interview at http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Contemporary-tale-kids-run-tackles-reluctance/story-13185924-detail/story.html. The North issue 47 includes reviews of both the John Lucas' books we published last year as well as a rare review of our Hull anthology, Old City, New Rumours. Several other occasional Five Leaves' writers appear in that issue but it is worth seeking out (from www.inpressbooks.co.uk) for the articles on "reflections on 25 years of poetry" by some movers and shakers and, especially, Jeremy Pointing on 25 years of Peepal Tree press. Our book that is getting most coverage at the moment though is Roman Nottinghamshire, with a lot more to come. This is also our best selling book too, with its own dedicated website on http://romannottinghamshire.wordpress.com/. Naturally, the best headline is found in LeftLion, which has an interview with the author Mark Patterson announced as "Venneh, viddeh, vicceh", translated as "I came, I saw, I went shopping". LeftLion also includes a piece from Five Leaves' worker Pippa Hennessy about her first year at Five Leaves Towers which includes: "You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned about working class life in Stratford (London), Butlins in the 1950s, being Jewish in Glasgow during and after World War I, the life and times of Ray Gosling, and sodding fairies..." http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/the-five-leaves-diary/id/3864

Romans go digital

Five Leaves' current best-selling book is Roman Nottinghamshire. Four weeks in and we are planning a reprint. It is also quite obvious that at some stage there will have to be a second edition. A talk in Retford alone produced some gold dust. Meantime we have set up a dedicated microsite to gather all the latest Roman Nottinghamshire news. Who knew this was such a big area? We have also heard a rumour of someone else writing a book on Roman Notts. Typical, you wait 1600 years and two books come along at once. Here's the microsite.

http://romannottinghamshire.wordpress.com/

Romans again

Though Sainsbury's were out of dormice and garum sauce (you know the stuff, made from rotting fish) we successfully launched Roman Nottinghamshire at Nottingham University's nice little museum (www.nottingham.ac.uk/museum) which most people had not heard of, including some who had studied at the University. The good news is that the museum is moving to bigger and more public premises in the next year and a half and it might even have a retail facility. I'll vote for that. Residents of Southwell were there in numbers, not least supporters of the Save Roman Southwell campaign who think that the important remains recently discovered in the town would be best exploited other than by building more exceedingly expensive houses on top of them. The people vs. the developers again.

Many of the Roman exhibits on display at the museum turn up in the book, as do finds in several other local museums. There may not be much currently to see on the surface of Nottinghamshire from Roman times but there are beautiful objects of art, coin hoards, domestic equipment and rather a lot of pottery. The author, Mark Patterson, confessed a weariness about the pottery and wished that his 90,000 word book could have been longer if he had been allowed more space to talk about the interesting characters who spent so much of their lives digging up Roman Nottinghamshire, and, so often, completely misinterpreting what they found. He was at pains to say his book was a journalist's account of Roman Nottinghamshire not an archaeologist's account. What we wanted in other words. We wish he had more time on his hands so he could do Roman Derbyshire, Roman Leicestershire and gradually work his way to retirement and a shelf of books as good as his Nottinghamshire one. We are currently working with Mark to create a Roman Nottinghamshire website.

Libri quinque folii

This is it then, the final corrections have been put in, an agreement has been reached over which Roman Gods are merely minor deities (these things matter) and the barcode box has travelled up and down the Roman road pictured on the back cover until it is dizzy.

Roman Nottinghamshire started life as a talk at Lowdham Book Festival many years ago. The talk was packed out, and the author, who normally wrote about Romans in a national context agreed to write a book on Nottinghamshire. Her book never appeared, and was abandoned. Some years later, discovering that a journalist friend knew a lot about the subject he, Mark Patterson, agreed to write a 64 page book with ten or so illustrations, largely to sell at Tourist Offices and the like. As we approached his deadline Mark asked if it could be a bit longer - sure, liberty hall here. So, on the deadline appeared enough text to make a 300+ page book including over 100 illustrations. It was a much better idea, but left little time to have it professionally proof-read by a Roman specialist, edit and do a complicated production job, adding things like an index and extensive bibliography which would not have been needed in the smaller book. Here's our poster. But I've just realised that bookshops/Amazon/our own website have the old bibliographic information - so need to send out notice of changes of size, price, number of illustrations. And we changed the cover too.
Copies are available via http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/roman_nottinghamshire_mark_patterson_i022326.aspx

What have the Romans ever done for us?

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Some years ago, by dint of a chance conversation, Five Leaves planned to publish a book called Roman Nottinghamshire. Rather outside our usual fare of Jewish culture, social history, fiction and poetry. I suppose it could be described as social history, at a push. Anyway, the book never appeared, for reasons that need not detain you. There was a lot of interest in it though. Last night I got the first draft of Roman Nottinghamshire by Mark Patterson, an entirely different text. There was so much interest the first time that I was determined to find another author I could commission. Mark Patterson is a freelance journalist whose work I knew well from his days at Nottingham Evening Post and he has a deeper interest in Roman times than is probably healthy. I have to say his draft is excellent. He uses his journalistic skills to make a potentially dry subject entertaining, and informative, and brings in the voices of academics, local historians, or odd blokes he meets in fields to add colour. Although the nearest thing to Roman Nottinghamshire in situ is one bump in a field Mark has found lots to say and lots to show. His book be out next spring, email me at info@fiveleaves.co.uk if you want further information meantime as it is not yet orderable.