[1] The title of the programme is derived from the film Monty Python's Life of Brian, referencing the scene where the People's Front of Judea discuss "What have the Romans done for us?"

That wasn’t the first time they had visited the islands because Julius Caesar had come over a hundred years earlier, but he only stayed for a few weeks.

We'll be returning to those things later in the series, but for the moment lets see how they established their first foothold.Within 30 years of the invasion there were 60,000 Roman troops in Britain, they had come from some of the most advanced places in Europe, and to them this sort of settlement must have seemed primitive.

This is the story of how they transformed the landscape and laid the foundations for the countryside and the cities that we have today.When Britain became Roman the Britons gained access to the finest goods the Empire could offer.

By about AD 120, the northern frontier ranged from Wallsend in the east, to Carlisle in the west, and the emperor Hadrian said, "Build a wall, and keep all the others out."