This article examines the figure of Boudica (or Boadicea), with a specific focus on Thomas Thornycroft's Westminster Bridge statue, and on the work of the seventeenth-century antiquary, Edmund Bolton. By synthesizing historiography which investigates the idea of ‘historical culture’ in the modern and early modern periods, this article attempts to bridge chronological and generic divisions which exist in the study of the history of history. It argues that to fully understand the genealogy of popular historical ideas like Boudica, it is imperative that historians of such subjects take alongue-duréeapproach that situates individual artists and writers, and the historical-cultural works they produce, within their broader political, cultural, and social contexts while simultaneously viewing these works as part of a long, discursive process by which the past is successively reinterpreted. As a consequence, this article eschews an analysis of Boudica which labels her an ‘imperial icon’ for Victorian Britons, and argues that the relationship between contemporary context and the re-imagined past is not as straightforward as it might initially appear.

This innovative and distinctive book takes a long chronological view and a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach. It is the definitive work on the posthumous reputation of the ever-popular warrior queen of the Iceni, Queen Boadicea/Boudica. It explores her presence in British historical discourse, from the early modern rediscovery of the works of Tacitus to the first historical films of the early twentieth century. In doing so, the book seeks to demonstrate the continuity and persistence of historical ideas across time and throughout a variety of media. This focus on continuity leads into an examination of the nature of history as a cultural phenomenon and the implications this has for our own conceptions of history and its role in culture more generally. While providing contemporary contextual readings of Boudica’s representations, this book also explores the unique nature of historical ideas as durable cultural phenomena, articulated by very different individuals over time, all of whom were nevertheless engaged in the creative process of making history. Thus this book presents a challenge to the axioms of cultural history, new historicism, and other mainstays of twentieth- and twenty-first-century historical scholarship. It shows how, long before professional historians sought to monopolize historical practice, audiences encountered visions of past ages created by antiquaries, playwrights, poets, novelists, and artists, all of whom engaged with, articulated, and even defined the meaning of ‘historical truth’. This book argues that these individual depictions, variable audience reactions, and the abiding notion of history as truth constitute the substance of historical culture.

This article calls attention to the forgotten 'Britons, strike home', a song which, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was acknowledged as a British national anthem on a par with 'Rule, Britannia!' and 'God save the queen'. It traces the history of the song and the slogan 'Britons, strike home', highlights the many different contexts in which these patriotic words appeared, and illuminates discussions of patriotism and national identity throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its conclusion ruminates on the utility of digitized sources for recovering the popular culture of the past and the possible implications of this development.

This chapter and the following both draw the reader into seventeenth-century understandings of the past, and of Boudica in particular, and makes clear that in a time before disciplines, writers of ‘history’ were erudite commentators, immersed in political thought, the classical world, and contemporary ideas, as well as in drama, poetry, and the law. Chapter 1 shows the subtleties of Boudica’s place in history at this early stage by giving sustained attention to the work of Edmund Bolton (1574/5–c.1634), the first person to analyse the written and material evidence for Boudica’s deeds, and the last to do so in depth before the later nineteenth century. Bolton’s distaste for contemporary philosophy and his loyalty to James I were highly influential in determining the way the antiquary approached Boudica and her rebellion; but equally important was Bolton’s deep understanding of historical method and the strictures this placed on his interpretive latitude.

This chapter focuses on the boundaries between historical and political argument. It discusses the different ways that British antiquity could be politicized by historical writers of the eighteenth century. However, despite this, Boudica maintained a patriotic detachment from party fracases in prose literature. This is compared to her presentation in Richard Glover’s new play of 1753. Aside from questions of patriotism, Glover’s play brings to the fore drama’s relationship to history, and especially the fidelity to human nature that was demanded of both genres. Glover’s inability to accurately capture the spectrum of human emotions attracted extensive criticism, demonstrating another measure of ‘accuracy’ contemporaries applied to historical writing. With regards to Boudica herself, this chapter begins to consolidate the argument that Boudica’s reputation was rather more durable and positive than previous scholars have allowed.