This book blends the utile and the dulce in pleasing measures. Classicists will find themselves on familiar territory: W. has done her homework, and presents ancient evidence for Boudica and her society with care and attention to the best Latin and Greek sources and their modern editions. But this book, happily, is not about Boudica but ‘Boudica’ (Bonduca, Vodicia, Boadiceia, Buddig, Breaca, Voada … the list goes on), and it sticks to its guns: ‘A series of topic-based investigations illuminate the creative tensions between writers’ knowledge of Boudica's basic story and their own tastes, beliefs, and artistic objectives; considerations of audience, gender, politics, religion, and genre all play their part' (p. 18). While not going quite so far as to deem the original a fictional character, W. is primarily interested in how the gaps in our knowledge about Britain of the 50s and 60s c.e. were filled by imaginative (re)construction, ‘thought experiments raising questions and … offering … answers about Boudica's story’ (p. 23). In that imaginative exercise she rightly includes our earliest narrative accounts of the period, Tacitus and Dio, then ranges through material up to the present day, concentrating on British sources but including Italian Renaissance narratives (Ludovico da Ponte) and American art installations (‘The Dinner Party’). Children's books and TV shows, plays, popular history, novels, journalism, ‘straight’ history, movies, sculpture and royal pageantry all find their place in W.'s fascinating exploration of the different ways in which Boudica has been used variously to reflect, challenge, mock and praise British values and identities.

There are four main sections: ‘Textual Origins’ (on the ancient sources and her name), ‘Boudica the Woman’ (her body, family and home life), ‘A Call to Arms’ (the war with the Romans) and ‘Broader Horizons’ (pagan, Christian and national identities). The subdivisions of these begin with the ancient sources and then move on a roughly chronological track; while the material risks at times devolving into a catalogue, W. keeps things moving with a judicious selection of material, a neat dovetailing of chronological and topical arrangements, and an unexpected and delicious sense of humour. We learn, for example, that Boudica's husband Prasutagus ‘is the most overwhelmingly deceased monarch in British history’ (p. 80); of the occasional, but inconsistent, survival of one or both of Boudica's daughters: ‘it would offend narrative economy to waste a rescue on a girl for whom no happy ending is possible’ (p. 118); of her warrior talents, that she ‘exterminated half a legion but did not know how to park her wagons’ (p. 209); and of her dress as imagined in the late nineteenth century: ‘a woman with her build and coloring would be wise to abandon bulky, multicolored garments, and to make greater use of light fabric in pastel shades. [Marie] Trevelyan provided a much needed makeover …’ (p. 65).

These instances not only show W.'s wit, but illustrate as well how she constructs her story. Rather than worrying about the reliability of any of these versions, she is interested in how the authors deploy the narrative building blocks available to them, shifting and elaborating as their own generic, cultural or other circumstances demand. Prasutagus, for instance, is normally useful as a dead husband, providing Boudica with status but leaving her abandoned to the Roman danger; but he turns up also as alive; as a welcoming ghost; as a Dido figure, spurning the unfaithful queen in the underworld (Schofield's 1924 Boadicea); even as a Roman collaborator. Boudica's person, introduced through a close reading of the only ancient ‘description’ (Dio 62.2.4), provides a fascinating look at a series of stereotypical representations of beauty: the Greek passage, which describes her as very large (megiste), very awe-inspiring (blosurotate), with a rough voice and very tawny (xanthotaten) hair down to her buttocks; the sixteenth century found her ‘bristling’ quality to be ‘the decent reserve that repels improper advances’ (p. 61); her rough voice may belong to a madwoman (e.g. Tennyson's Boadicea) or to a sexy lioness (Gedge, The Eagle and the Raven [1978]); in the twentieth century, a solution to Boudica's problematic size is found in focussing ‘on parts of the female anatomy that could be both big and beautiful’ (no prizes for guessing which ones). Many versions had trouble with specifying the length of her hair (exactly how far did it reach? the crura? her ‘back’? her feet?), while its colour might indicate her nationality (was she Celtic? Hispanic? Caledonian? Gallic?), an important element of the role she played in the given text.

And that role is the central question posed by this book, the heart of W.'s interest. Boudica is obviously good to think with – but in what ways? And why? She has been variously an example of British (or English) womanhood (the section on oat cakes and their narrative functions is particularly fine), an endorser of organised sport (with interesting remarks on muscular Christianity), a softcore porn fantasy, an evocation of the primitive and bloody past – and, of course, a figurehead for British resistance, a forerunner of Victoria and Victory (a connection made by scholarly fascination with etymology, and the discovery that the proto-Celtic *bouda connotes ‘victorious’). She has been explicitly named as a model for or avatar of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, Condoleezza Rice and (of course) Margaret Thatcher. But she has also been a figurehead for a disabled women's group; for militant Protestantism; and for druids and healers. W. could have spent more time on Boudica's obvious congener, Cleopatra, who might have solved her concern that Dio had trouble seeing a powerful woman as attractive (Cleopatra appears briefly at p. 203 as a ‘distinguished potential role model’, but she is clearly more than that); and I personally would have liked to hear about Boudica's imaginary grave site at Battle Bridge, now near King's Cross station (marked as ‘alleged or in dispute’ by findagrave.com: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6497). But these are quibbles about what is a fun and illuminating read. Jump on the chariot, ladies!