Here, for the first time, is the true story of some of the most romantic and colorful figures in the whole of British history. Caratacus, the indomitable British king who defied Roman might for eight years, emerges as one of the great guerilla fighters in world history. Queen Boadicea, whose bloody revolt came close to exterminating the Roman invaders, is seen as the last champion of an ancient matriarchal society, while Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme is revealed as Old Coel the Splendid, who ruled the Scottish borders after the break with Rome. Here too are Anglo-Saxon heroes, from King Alfred and Wild Edric to King Harold and Hereward the Wake, struggling bravely against Vikings and Normans; and William Wallace, the son of a poor Scottish knight, but for whom Scotland might have become an English province. What mattered was not their ultimate victory, but their refusal ever to give in, the dogged perseverance in an apparently lost cause displayed by Caratacus in the Welsh hills, Alfred on Athelney or Hereward amid the Ely fens. - Jacket flap.