Over the last two decades there has been a call to develop interpretative frameworks for the Roman towns of Britain that do not just describe the monumental building, houses and walls, but which get to grips with the lived experience and the social diversity of these urban communities (James and Millett [edd.], Britons and Romans: Advancing an Archaeological Agenda [2001]). Creating new perspectives to make greater sense of the phenomenal amount of data being produced by developer-funded archaeology in the cities of Britain is certainly needed. R.'s volume attempts to tackle one specific strand of this, the impact and perception of water within the urban environment, or as he prefers ‘waterscapes’.

Chapter 1 sets out the themes of the book well, including: how Romano-British towns have been previously studied, classical sources relating to water, and introducing his key aspirational theme which is deriving cultural meaning from an analysis of water and urban spaces.

Chapter 2 provides five case studies of urban waterscapes in Britain: London, Canterbury, Cirencester, Lincoln and Winchester. Each site is discussed in relation to the pre-Roman evidence and the waterways, with a focus on canalisation, waterfronts and the rerouting of rivers. Evidence is clearly referenced. Each section is supported by line drawings, though given that the flow of water is the theme of the book, there is a curious lack of topography on the illustrations: flood plains, surface geology, contours, estimated tidal range, all would have been helpful to appreciate the presence and dynamic flow of water. One aspect that comes through clearly is the ambiguity in the interpretation of the evidence for the re-routing or control of river channels at these sites, especially at Cirencester, Canterbury and Winchester. It is curious that although it is 25 years since English Heritage funded its first Urban Assessment in York (O. Arup, York Development and Archaeology [1991]), which included plenty of solid modelling to map the subsurface terrains of York based on excavations and borehole data, the roll-out of this programme across many cities overlying towns of Roman Britain has still left our collective knowledge of the ancient terrain weak.

Chapter 3, ‘Rivers, Lakes and Islands: Towns, Changing Waterscapes and Geography’, broadens out R.'s range of sites with references to many more towns. As in the previous chapter, it is evidence-rich, but perhaps overly descriptive rather than interpretative. Chapter 4, ‘The Land/Water Interface and the Construction of Waterfront Installations’, is the chapter where human agency is brought into the narrative best in a multitude of examples interpreting evidence. Chapter 5 diverts into a long discussion of wetlands and land reclamation in rural and coastal contexts, drawing upon the work on the Gwent Levels, Humber wetlands and elsewhere; though it eventually comes back to look at land reclamation in towns. Finally Chapter 6 draws the book to a conclusion.

This book is certainly not a holistic view of the use, management and perceptions of water in a townscape. Water supply and bathhouses gain virtually no attention, which is perhaps surprising. The control and formalisation of land–water interfaces which distinguishes Roman towns from later Iron Age oppida is something that R. is keen on exploring, but canalisation in terms of supply by aqueducts demonstrating a control over nature apparently is not. Bathhouses, which form a major component of discourses on changing social identity, concepts of the body and in the rhythm of life within a city, could have equally fitted his agenda. Roman Bath, where the natural hot springs were managed within a shrine, temple and bathhouse complex and which should have perfectly fitted his themes, is all but missing. Similarly Silchester, one of the best studied towns of Britain, is also curiously absent, perhaps because it lacks the rivers and is fed by wells and springs. None the less, there is plenty of space in the book for land reclamation in rural areas, which detracts from the core theme. Perhaps given the lack of discussion of many other aspects of water in cities, his discourse might have been better encapsulated in the term urban riverscapes rather than waterscapes, since that would have reflected his actual primary focus, and it might have managed readers' expectations better.

R.'s ambition was to change people's approach to urbanism, which would be setting his bar rather high. I do not think that this volume will achieve that. But the work is still commendably useful, bringing together many of the sources of evidence for waterfronts. Like R.'s previous works, the British bibliography is extensive, though could usefully have extended across into Gaul and Germany to show how many of the traits and phenomena seen here of islands, land reclamation and moving rivers, are also common there (see the recent survey of eighteen early Roman cities in Gallia 72.1 [2015]: La naissance des capitales de cités en Gaule Chevelue). This is the second monograph by R. on Roman towns following his Late Roman Towns in Britain (2011) and his writing is continuing apace. It will be interesting to see how his thoughts and ambition to find new angles and create new narrative frameworks for the province of Britannia develop.