The volume, the first full-scale, comprehensive and scholarly history of the ancient borough of Colchester to be published, describes the life of the oldest and for long the largest town in Essex from the Iron Age to 1990. It tells how the stronghold of Cunobelin was replaced by a Roman fortress, later a colonia sacked by Boudica and rebuilt within walls which survived to encompass first a 10th-century burh and later an important medieval town and were to be severely battered be the Royalist siege of 1648. Colchester's Norman castle continued to serve as the sheriff's seat, housing the county...