Claudius and Wilfrid

I have to confess to a curious resentment as I read about the occupation of Britain by the Romans, the sense of a conquered and subdued country forced to assimilate Roman ways: curious because it is, after all, nearly two millennia ago. The Irish always point out that the Romans didn't get there so that the old tribal ways endured: they had to wait for the British for their own subjugation. The connection with Wilfrid is that I went to a school, full of boys and priests with Irish surnames, which was named after a man who did Rome's work on the Christians of these isles at the Synod of Whitby. I love the image of the Celtic priests with their tonsures, shaved to behind the ears and the rest of the hair worn in a pigtail.