The Spirit of Hadrian's Wall - Tapa dura

In this coffee table book of photographs of Hadrian's Wall, Roger Clegg and Mark Richards use this iconic Roman frontier land to evoke times past, from the Romans through the industrial age to the 20th century. In this first collection of his iconic and breathtaking images, Roger has captured myriad contrasting moods and landscapes, often at times of day and seasons of the year that few visitors ever see - blazing skies at dawn and dusk, veils of mist lifting from the crags or new-fallen snow banked against the familiar stonework. As the sequence of images moves from east to west, in the steps of the Roman wall-builders, author Mark Richards sketches the historical and social context. The Roman footprint is naturally writ large but there are also stories to be told from the age of Arthur, the early Christian missionaries and the Reiver years and of great industrial milestones closer to the modern age.

A professional photographer living in Hexham,Northumberland, Roger Clegg has devoted much of the last six years to photographing Hadrian's Wall and the surrounding countryside. Mark Richards has a particular appreciation of English frontiers. Guides to Offa's Dyke, the Anglo-Welsh border, lead naturally to Hadrian's Wall. In 1993 he pioneered a coast to coast route The Wall Walk published by Cicerone, is fore-runner to Hadrian's wall Path.