![]() And when I was younger, oh, I used to catch this bus into school and the bus would go past the Roman Walls of Colchester - so it's all around us, really. ![]() Most of them have been knocked down and dug up since, but there's a lot here that you can just walk around and look at. There are a lot of Roman remains in Britain. Tell us how you learned all the fine details about the Roman Empire and let me warn you in advance if you say, oh, it's all on the Internet, I'm going to be very disappointed. RUTH DOWNIE (Author, "Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire"): Oh, thanks for inviting me, Scott. Downie, thanks very much for being with us. Ruth Downie joins us from the studios of the BBC in Northampton, England. Ruth Downie's new book, her first novel, is called "Medicus." It's an English murder mystery set in the ancient Roman Empire and inflected with British wit. And in a moment of unexpected generosity Ruso is moved to buy a pathetic slave girl, Tilla, who has a broken arm and he finds himself investigating the deaths of prostitutes who had worked out of a local tavern. ![]() ![]() The provincial outpost is Britannia, which is now Chester, England. Worst of all, the food stinks, literally. He's an officer, an army doctor of the Roman Empire who feels cast adrift in a place teeming with squalid beggars, importuning pimps, currish dogs, unbathed slaves with matted hair and locals with thick, funny accents. ![]() Gaius Petrius Ruso was a man of education and elegance doing his duty in a savage land. ![]()
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