Totally Chaotic History: Roman Britain Gets Rowdy

If you like your history at speed, with information shared in a truly chaotic manner, then this is the book for you! Podcaster and historian Jenner has joined forces with Roman historian and writer Southon to create a whirlwind tour of Roman Britain, from early beginnings to the sticky end, accompanied by Parekh’s hilarious illustrations.

Right from the start, Jenner warns his audience that they are in for a wild ride and introduces his chaos meter to show us how ‘cheerfully calm or calamitously chaotic’ things are getting along the way. Dr Southon pops up through the whole book as the voice of calm and reason, providing lots of extra facts, as well as clarifying or even contradicting the main chunks of information.

There is a real mixture of styles, with traditional layouts interspersed with fact files, newspaper articles, quizzes, myth busters as well as the laugh out loud cartoons and illustrations. We even get to chat to Julius Ceasar in a social media style setting!

Children will enjoy dipping in and out of the pages of this book, rather than necessarily having to read it through from start to finish. The whole format is lots of fun and guaranteed to appeal to its target audience. With an existing title looking at unruly Ancient Egypt, this is an exciting series that will hopefully encourage a love of history through the ages within the younger generation.