Roman Britain in Twenty Towns with Professor Richard Hingley

Professor Richard Hingley is coming to Topping & Company Booksellers on Thursday 10 September to talk about his new book, Roman Britain in Twenty Towns. It's an author talk, so you'll hear him discuss the work in person rather than just reading it on your own. The talk starts at 7pm, with doors opening at 6.30pm, at the shop's Museum Street home.

Roman Britain in Twenty Towns is a guide that works its way through twenty Roman towns, tracing how each one grew out of an Iron Age settlement or a military fortress. It's not just a list, either: it includes maps, museum information, and a summary of recent work on each site, so it doubles as a practical companion if you're planning to visit any of them. Edward Biddulph of Oxford Archaeology described it as an evocative and clear guide.

Hingley is an Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at Durham University, and this is one of several books he's written on the subject. He's the author of Hadrian's Wall: A Life, Londinium: A Biography — which won the 2019 Prose Award — and Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain. If you've followed his previous work, this one fits right in, taking that same focus on specific places and applying it to twenty towns across the province.

The talk is hosted by Topping & Company, which opened its new York home in June 2026 in the former Visit York building on Museum Street. They've converted the 1860 Victorian Poor Law Union headquarters into what they call the largest independent bookshop in the UK — almost 6,000 square feet across three floors, with more than 75,000 books. It's their first store in the city, alongside their shops in Bath, Edinburgh, Ely and St Andrews. The event is at The Bookshop, 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT, on Thursday 10 September: doors open at 6.30pm, talk starts at 7pm.