Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers is the winner of the 1959 Carnegie Medal in Literature.
The last of the Roman army have set sail and left Britain for ever, abandoning it to civil war and the threat of a Saxon invasion.Aquila deserts his regiment to return to his family, but his home and all that he loves are destroyed. Years of hardship and fighting follow and in...
Threatened by a tide of invaders, the last of the Roman Auxiliaries are to leave Britain forever. But Aquila, a young legionnaire, chooses to stay behind, in order to join the fight to save his native land.