Some months ago various kind people helped me put together some sources for finding out about Roman Britain. Here’s one that got away. I’m still wondering how.
“Roman Britain – A Sourcebook” (it’s hard to say it more clearly than that, isn’t it?!) edited by Stanley Ireland, published by Routledge and updated to a third edition in 2008. It pulls all the relevant ancient texts together into one book, saving not only time but potentially a huge amount of space.
I’ve been thinking for ages that somebody really ought to do this. And it turns out they already have. In fact they’ve been doing it since 1986. Duh!
Ruth Downie 
Thanks for this info, Ruth. I’ve got the 1992 edition of the Sourcebook and agree that it’s extremely useful. I hadn’t realised there was a recent (well relatively) new edition, and am now wondering whether I should treat myself to that…does anybody know whether the 2008 edition contains very much new material? It would mainly be inscriptions, I suppose, as the Vindolanda tablets were mostly available by 1992, though there aren’t as many of those as I’d have expected. That could have been changed, and also Ireland’s commentary, which is good but then again so much new work has been done in the last couple of decades.
Hi Jane,
Sorry for the slow response on this one – deadline looming!
The editor’s intro to the third edition very modestly says that in the years since the second edition, ‘discoveries have not been as spectacular as those I was able include then’ – well I suppose it would be hard to rival the Vindolanda letters. He says he has sampled what has come to light and included some ‘material already known’ to broaden the base of examples. He’s also included the passages about Britain in Caesar and Tacitus so everything is together in one place. I guess if you’ve been keeping your eye on the news over the last few years, you’ll have met much of the new material anyway. But I’m very pleased to have found it all put together at last.