The first date in English History, according to 1066 and All That, is 55 BC, the year of Julius Caesar's memorable landing at Thanet. “The Ancient Britons”, Sellar and Yeatman remind us, “were by no means savages before the Conquest, and had already made great strides in civilisation, e.g. they buried each other in long round wheelbarrows (agriculture) and burnt each other alive (religion) under the guidance of even older Britons called Druids or Eisteddfods . . . . The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at that time.”Except for a small minority of mistletoe-wielding henge-huggers, pre-conquest Britain has never really impinged much on the British national imagination. In schools, Our Island Story starts with Roman Britain, which is still basically seen as a Good Thing.
