Under Another Sky
“Howard Brenton, 1980 If you stand at the end of the modernist concrete pier in the Kentish town of Deal, you can lean into the sea breeze, as fresh to the face as a dousing of cold water, and look back to the shoreline, where toffee-coloured waves crackle against the pebbled beach. It was between this point and Walmer, a few hundred metres south on Kent’s blunt, east-facing edge, that Julius Caesar is thought to have landed. And so, with its first securely dated and recorded event, the story of... Britain slipped from prehistory into history.
There is no trace of this event to be seen now. Nor, in fact, is it certain that Caesar landed here. Rather, Deal beach is the spot around which an uncertain consensus has gathered, working from the general’s own account of his two incursions into Britain, in the summers of 55 and 54 BC. Even without reading too closely between the lines of Caesar’s self-justifying narrative, it is clear that they were inglorious affairs. In 55, the troops were impeded by their heavy arms and armour as they tried to disembark in swirling deep water.MoreLess
There is no trace of this event to be seen now. Nor, in fact, is it certain that Caesar landed here. Rather, Deal beach is the spot around which an uncertain consensus has gathered, working from the general’s own account of his two incursions into Britain, in the summers of 55 and 54 BC. Even without reading too closely between the lines of Caesar’s self-justifying narrative, it is clear that they were inglorious affairs. In 55, the troops were impeded by their heavy arms and armour as they tried to disembark in swirling deep water.MoreLess
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