The Legate and the Caledonian Queen: Book 1 from a Series of 19

The hero is Adrianus and follows his posting to the very edge of the Roman Empire to Caer Amon (Cramond), an outpost to the Antonine Wall on the Forth Estuary. A man of uncertain parentage who with his family must not only face the Caledonian tribes at his fort gate but also the treachery within from those wishing to discredit the new Emperor. For every hero there should also be a heroine as history has neglected the heroines.

Mine is the young and spirited Selinda, Queen of the Venicones, Caledonia’s own Boudicca. How can she maintain her rule and the future of her tribe as she is caught between the Romans to the south and the Caledonii to the north whilst facing rivals amongst her own tribe? They agree to meet on an island in the Forth. Will she poison him or will they love and work together for the good of Rome and her tribe? Read on!

The first Roman novel on the Antonine Wall it features not just the Roman Army but also the women and their families living on the very edge of the Roman Empire almost 2,000 years ago. It is the first of 19 featuring other forts and the soldiers and their families as well as the tribes’ people on or around the Wall.

Bryan Wallace comes from North Shields, Northumberland, and now lives near Caer Amon, Cramond, Edinburgh which is the Roman fort featured in this story. A distant cousin of Alexander Selkirk, of Robinson Crusoe fame, he has walked both the Antonine and Hadrian Walls.

Bryan graduated in 2017, with an MA in Roman Frontier Studies at Newcastle University. He has been Antonine Wall guest speaker at an International Roman Archaeology Conference. Bryan has taught at Newcastle University on an online Hadrian’s Wall course. He is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute; a former Deputy Director of Planning at Fife Council and now director of Wallace Planning Limited.

An enthusiastic volunteer archaeologist; his oldest find is a 6,500 years old hazelnut shell. He helped uncover St Aidan’s Monastery on Lindisfarne, Northumberland. His other main interests are bee-keeping in his Edinburgh allotment where most of the book was written and walking the beautiful Northumberland and Scottish coast and countryside.