Roma Nova on Jo Frances Penn's Books and Travel podcast

Travel is a wide concept. It doesn’t just mean trotting up the steps to a plane or sitting back looking out of a train window, or even visiting entrancing and exotic places.

Travel can be in the mind, across hundreds or possibly thousands of years, into other realities and mentalities, even into an alternative […]

Taking the plunge - Roman baths

The Baths at Caracalla, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1899

Baths were such an intrinsic part of the Roman world that we can’t think of one without the other. Everybody went to the baths – everybody.

Today we see bathing as something we do privately in the home, but bathing in Rome was a communal, social […]

Where DO those Roma Nova titles come from?

Choosing book titles is like being prodded by Pluto in the underworld with a red hot trident for eternity. One commenter on social media said: “They sound great, but I can’t help but cringe at the titles. Not quite Latin. I suppose that’s probably the point, but ouch. Intriguing, though.“

I […]