Pag. 7 ex. 4
If you really want to get an idea of what life was like when the Romans were around, come to Hadrian’s Wall. This amazing feat of engineering was built following a visit by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 122 AD. It is 80 Roman miles (about 73 modern miles) long, 8-10 feet wide and 15 feet high. If you think that was an achievement, it was not all-no, in addition to the wall, the Romans built a system of small forts, called “milecastles”, which housed garrisons of up to 60 men and were placed one every Roman mile along its entire length. Sixteen larger forts holding from 500 to 1000 troops were built into the wall, too, and the best known, Housesteads, is now a magnificent open air museum which can show you what life was like for the soldiers who guarded the empire against barbarian raids from the north. You may be surprised to find it was not as cruel a fate than you imagined-no, the soldiers had underground heat in their sleeping quarters and public hot baths! Come and let your imagination take you back to those distant times in an area tourists have been coming to since the second and third centuries. Let’s go back two thousand years! For an unforgettable experience come to Hadrian’s Wall!

Pag. 7 ex. 5
Dear Mr Langdon,
I’m writing because I’m going to visit the North East of England. I recently visited your website, and I found it very interesting, but I wanted more information about Hadrian’s Wall.
First of all I wanted to know if there are cycling itineraries to get to the wall, because I heard about England’s beautiful landscape and I wanted to enjoy it cycling. Also I wanted to know if there are available facilities to get to Housesteads and I wanted more details about the museum. At last, I wanted to know if you could suggest me a place where to stay, I’d rather an hotel, but if there isn’t one, everything’s okay to me.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Best wishes
Anna

Pag. 21 ex. 3
A savage raid on the Holy island of Lindisfarne in 793 marked the beginning of England’s Viking era. Lindisfarne was the first of a wave of similar attacks on monasteries in northern Britain. Why such hatred? And why 793? We need to examine the political situation in northern Europe at the time. The main political powers in the world were: Byzantium in the east; the Muslims, whose expansion had driven them eastward as far as Turkistan and Asia Minor; and the Franks, who had become the dominant tribe among the successor states after the fall of the Roman Empire in the west.
Charlemagne, the ruler of the Franks, expended a huge amount of energy on the subjugation of the heathen Scots on his northeast border. He had been crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III in 800-emperor of the abstract conception of Christendom as a single community. The cultural subjugation of the Saxons followed: death was the penalty for following heathen rites or rejecting baptism. How should the heathen Scandinavians react to the threat? Should the Vikings wait for Charlemagne’s armies to arrive and convert them or should they fight to defend their culture?
The Christian monasteries in northern Europe were symbolically important and, in the words used by modern terrorist, “soft targets”. The Christian annalists who documented Viking violence viewed the conflict as a battle between religious cultures. In 865 “the Great Heathen Army” arrived, a force which after 15 years had gained control of England from York down to East Anglia. By 927 much of the lost territory had been regained by the Wessex Kings Alfred the Great, Edward and Athelstan. Largescale Viking violence returned to England in the 990s. The policy of the Danegeld-protection money paid in return for being left alone-was practiced regularly.
In 1012 the Archbishop of Canterbury was captured and murdered, and within two years a Danish king, Sven Forkbeard, was on the throne. By 1028 his son, Cnut, was the ruler of a North sea empire that included Denmark, Norway and all England. Danish rule lasted less than thirty years. Its memories were wiped out by William of Normandy’s conquest in 1066.