SOURCE: "Manifestations of a Myth," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4467, November 11-17, 1988, p. 1248.

In the following review of Boadicea's Chariot: The Warrior Queens, Beard assesses Fraser's version of Boadicea's story in relation to several other available accounts.

Boadicea is myth. She was already a part of mythology for the Romans who first wrote about her and about her hopelessly doomed rebellion against the forces of occupation in Britain. At the time her story, retold and embellished, evoked both admiration and fear. For some Romans she was the noble savage, who at least for a few days jolted the complacency of an imperial power, effete and corrupt at its centre. For others she was the mad witch, who made real those dread male fantasies of female control. In Britain, at the margins of the civilized world, the Romans escaped from her only by the skin of their teeth. It...