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Two complete statues of a woman and a man, along with the head of a child, were found at the site of the old St Mary's Norman church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, south east England, while archeologists were excavating a ditch around the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon tower. As experts working on the High Speed 2 (HS2) project dug down, they found the three "stylistically Roman" busts, Two of the busts were made up of a head and torso which had been split apart, which experts say "is not entirely unusual," because statues were commonly vandalized before being torn down....

The Royal Mint, the British maker tasked with producing all of the UK's coinage, has released a new limited edition coin design depicting the national icon Britannia as a woman of color for the first time. Britannia was the Latin name given to the UK by the Romans after their invasion in 43 CE. The weapon-clad warrior woman became a personification of the British Isles and has fronted the country's currency since 1672.

The object found was a large lead ingot or 'pig' (about half a metre long, weighing 63 kilograms). The 'writing' reported by Mr Jones was a cast Latin inscription confirming that it was Roman and about 2,000 years old... The exploitation of Britain's natural resources was one of the reasons cited by Roman authors for the invasion of Britain by the Emperor Claudius in AD 43... Lead ore or galena contains silver as well as lead, and both were valuable commodities for the Romans. Less than a hundred lead ingots of this type are known from the mines of Roman...

An ancient quarry near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England offers a smutty glimpse into the lives of the Roman soldiers who built the famous fortification. Archaeologists from the U.K.’s Newcastle University and Historic England are working to record the unique inscriptions carved into the walls of the quarry, which provided stone for Hadrian’s Wall. The sandstone inscriptions include a caricature of an officer and a phallus, which denoted good luck in Roman culture. Other carvings at the quarry in Gelt Forest have helped experts date the rare inscriptions. One inscription, for example, describes ‘APRO ET MAXIMO CONSVLIBVS OFICINA MERCATI,’ a...

All nine episodes of original drama series Britannia will premiere Friday, January 26 on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon also has released the trailer for the series which charts the Roman invasion of what would become Great Britain in 43 A.D.

THOUSANDS of British-born Muslims have joined the Taliban in Afghanistan. UK troops say they are facing a mini civil war as more Brits head out to fight for the enemy. Senior officers said British-born Muslims from the West Midlands and Yorkshire have travelled to Helmand province and other parts of southern Afghanistan. Interception of Taliban communications has revealed the sound of jihadists speaking with West Midlands accents. One senior military source said: “It is the Punjabi and Kashmiri Urdu speakers who fall back into English in, for example, Brummie accents. “You get the impression they have been told not to...

Brown banishes 300-year-old tradition by removing Britannia from our 50p coinBy SIMON McGEE and GLEN OWEN - More by this author » Last updated at 21:14pm on 26th January 2008  Gordon Brown's campaign to promote British values was exposed as a sham last night after it was revealed he personally approved a decision to remove Britannia from the 50p coin.   The patriotic symbol - based on a Roman goddess - will no longer be on any British coin for the first time in more than 300 years, as part of a redesign by the Royal Mint. An overhaul of...

By Trevor Timpson BBC News The Last Roman's grave (ringed) was found close to the Square. Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule.That the skeleton of "London's Last Roman" - or anything ancient and unknown - can be discovered in 2006 in Trafalgar Square is remarkable. But when it comes to yielding secrets, the square's church, St Martin-in-the-Fields, has a long record. When the present church was being built in the 18th Century a body was...

English Heritage is conducting stabilisation work at the site Archaeologists have found traces of a Roman settlement at a 5,000-year-old landmark man-made hill in Wiltshire.English Heritage believes there was a Roman community at Silbury Hill about 2,000 years ago. The 130ft Neolithic mound near Avebury - one of Europe's largest prehistoric monuments - is thought to have been created some 3,000 years earlier. Experts carrying out a project to stabilise the hill say the site may have been a sacred place of pilgrimage. Human activity English Heritage geophysicist Dr Neil Linford said: "We are really excited by this discovery...

An assertion was made yesterday on the Web site of an al Qaeda affiliate claiming responsibility for the terrorist bombings in London: "Britain is now burning with fear." This is not true; and it cannot ever be true, because it is alien to the British character to "burn." And even if ardor were not so damned un-British, "fear" would never make for kindling in Britannia. Some nations are too stoical, too suspicious of disarray, to panic or wilt in the face of hostility.... When I moved to London..., I was greatly impressed by the large, stark billboards I saw all...

We'll bury the dead, comfort the bereaved and carry on in the way we know best. The police will chase the terrorists, the military will continue in the War on Terror and us? Tim Worstall explains what British reaction is and will be. You will, no doubt, by now heard of the terrorist bombings in London. The BBC's site gives a general overview and Nosemonkey at Europhobia has been blogging the different sources and rumors far better than my attempt. There is also a pool of photos at Flickr and Wikipedia is up and running on the subject. As...

A few weeks ago London Mayor Ken Livingstone likened a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard because he didn't approve of the reporter's employer. Despite the furor, the mayor remains unrepentant. Offensive as this comment was, abetted by his lack of minimal remorse, it could have been dismissed as a momentary indiscretion that he was psychologically incapable of retracting. Livingstone, after all, has a long history of putting his foot in his mouth. But on Friday Livingstone dispelled any lingering doubts. This time his bile couldn't be ascribed to an off-the-cuff gaffe. It was carefully premeditated and formulated...

The "massive" anti-war, anti-America, anti-George Bush demonstrations promised for London more or less fizzled yesterday, but the big guns - the peace-at-any-price people should pardon the expression - were expected to be out today. The Stop the War Coalition says 100,000 protesters will march past Parliament and up to Downing St. to condemn the U.S.-British alliance in Iraq. Have fun, folks. And while you're marching, you might thank the British and American governments for upholding rights of free speech, and for bringing same to Iraq. Yesterday, some demonstrators poured red dye into a Trafalgar Square fountain to represent spilled Iraqi...