Author:Andrew Collins
'Higher education comes at exactly the right time: in the twilight of your teens, you're just starting to coagulate as a human being, to pull away from parental influence and find your own feet. What better than three years in which to explore the inner you, establish a feasible worldview, and maybe get on Blockbusters.'
After an idyllic provincial 1970s childhood, the 1980s took Andrew Collins to London, art school and the classic student experience. Crimping his hair, casting aside his socks and sporting fingerless gloves, he became Andy Kollins: purveyor of awful poetry; disciple of moany music, and wannabe political activist. What follows is a universal tale of trainee hedonism, girl trouble, wasted grants and begging letters to parents.
A synth-soundtracked rite of passage that's often painfully funny, it traces one teenager's metamorphosis from sheltered suburban innocent to semi-mature metropolitan male through the pretensions and confusions of trying to stand alone for the first time in your own kung fu pumps in a big bad city.
It's perceptive, moving and excruciatingly funny. A treasure
—— Sunday TimesCollins' easygoing charm is hard to resist. A welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons
—— The HeraldBeautifully observed, cleverly narrated and very readable, it's like being part of the great unwashed again
—— Jockey SlutEntertaining and surprisingly familiar read ... Even for those of us who were still in pre-school at the time, the joys and lows are all given an added relevance via the author's emulation of Nick Hornby's self-deprecating humour. Like High Fidelity, if it had been written by a teenage Rob Fleming
—— Rock SoundUnder Another Sky should be on every shelf in the UK. Part travelogue, part handbook and part revisionist history, it is a personal and vivid encounter with landscapes, artefacts and people… Beautifully considered and written.
—— Ruth Padel , New StatesmanA delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... Under Another Sky is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors.
—— Christopher Hart , Sunday TimesIn her gentle, fine prose, [Higgins] suggests convincingly that Britain was thoroughly changed by its two Roman invasions, and that modern Britain is still built on a Roman skeleton.
—— Harry Mount , Daily TelegraphCharming, intriguing and not-infrequently elegiac... What is most impressive here, rather than either the erudition of the endeavour, is simply the writing.
—— Stuart Kelly , ScotsmanCharlotte Higgins looks at what Roman Britain meant to those who, from medieval mythographer Geoffrey of Monmouth to W.H. Auden, subsequently thought about it.
—— David Robinson , ScotsmanLyrical, haunting look at Roman Britain and its echo in our culture.
—— Sunday TimesDelightful... There is much here to inform and amuse.
—— Richard Hobbs , Evening StandardPart travelogue, part history, part archaeology, this multi-faceted book seeks out what is familiar – and what is not… This is an enriching and eclectic book.
—— Ross Leckie , Country LifeA thoughtful and entertaining reminder that, long before the Anglo-Saxons, the Romans gave an identity to "a land as ferocious as its people".
—— Simon J V Malloch , Literary ReviewIt’s a compelling travelogue and Higgins’s passion for discovery shines out.
—— Emerald Street[She] is witty, rangy, unapologetically goofy and erudite at once.
—— Lorin Stein , Paris ReviewThis book will be of interest to those who want to see and learn more about a significant period in British history.
—— UK Regional PressHiggins wears her considerable erudition lightly and nimbly hops between her knowledge of the classics and the changing perception of the ancients by the British of the past few centuries.
—— Ben Felsenburg , MetroA very personal encounter with Roman Britain… Invites us to see our landscape and history as the Romans first imagined and wrote about them – strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world.
—— UK Regional Press[Higgins] is as sharp and sensitive an observer of the latest version of Britannia as she is of the earliest one… Each chapter is not just a regional itinerary but also a brilliantly constructed and often exhilaratingly poetic treatment of wider themes.
—— Emily Gowers , Times Literary SupplementRecords [Higgins’] own travels around the island in search of Roman traces. She includes plenty of anecdotes about the continuing fascination with the Roman past and its penetration of the present.
—— OldieHiggins produced another remarkable British travelogue… that was at once thoughtful, learned, witty and superbly written.
—— William Dalrymple , ObserverFilled with passion and personal interest… Higgins walks us around the landscape of this country as it would have been 2,000 years ago, and in doing so she ably captures the spirit of Britain now, Britain then and Britain in between.
—— Dan Jones , TelegraphWhether at Hadrian’s Wall or in a car park in the City, she [Higgins] shows how Roman traces are woven through British life.
—— Financial TimesA fascinating look at how we have viewed Rome's presence in these islands and what a debt we still owe to Roman achievements.
—— Good Book GuidePart history, part travelogue, [Higgins] also brings to life the eccentric archaeologists who have tried to recapture that lost civilisation.
—— Robbie Millen , The TimesA fresh and readable account
—— Fachtna Kelly , Sunday Business PostUnder Another Sky is not only a work of personal history, it is more personal than that... It is conversational, anecdotal, in a way that makes it easy for [Higgins] to slip in quite a lot of information
—— Nicholas Lezard , GuardianA delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... The result is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors
—— Christopher Hart , Sunday TimesThe beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and in the precision with which [Higgins] skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy she shows for the myth-makers.
—— Peter Stothard , The TimesEvocative...a keen-eyed tour of Britain.
—— Christopher Hirst , IndependentPacked with fascinating and thought-provoking insights.
—— HeraldA captivating travelogue.
—— Helena Gumley-Mason , LadyA delightfully heady and beautifully written potpourri of a book.
—— BBC History MagazineA fascinating look at the debt we owe to Roman achievements
—— Good Book GuideOne of those fantastical novels that tells us more about the realities of being human than most realist novels do…the most thrilling and moving experience fiction has to offer this year.
—— TIME (Top 10 Fiction Books of Year)Kate Atkinson's audacious novel plays a virtuoso game with the nature of fiction...her best book to date and a worthy winner of a Costa Prize.
—— Daily Telegraph