Elodie Harper's Boudicca's Daughter is shortlisted for the 2026 Adventure Writing Prize.

About the Book: 

Born to a legend. Forced to fight. Determined to succeed.

Meet Solina.

Boudicca’s Daughter.

Solina, daughter of the infamous warrior Boudicca and the Druid king of the British Iceni tribe, is destined to lead her people alongside her sister. But the role is not simple. The kingdom hangs in precarious balance, torn between her father’s desire to cooperate with the Romans and her mother’s urge to fight them. As Roman rule grows ever more oppressive, Solina must decide whose vision she shares.

When the goddess of war strikes the cruellest of blows, Solina is left to face the might of Rome alone. What follows is an epic journey for survival – one which will take her from Britain’s sacred marshlands to the glittering façades of Nero’s Imperial Court.

It is a journey that will force her to ask: what does it truly mean to be Boudicca’s daughter?

From the author of the award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling Wolf Den Trilogy comes a dazzling epic set in the Roman world about the daughter of one of Britain’s most powerful heroines.

An Interview with the Author: 

WNSF: Congratulations on being shortlisted for the 2026 Adventure Writing Prize! What does adventure writing mean to you? Would you have considered yourself an adventure writer before being shortlisted for the Prize?

Elodie: Adventure writing means going on a heart-pounding journey, destination unknown. The book might be an actual quest, or it might be a story where the characters (and readers!) face emotional challenges and surprises, but either way, you know you are in for a rollercoaster. I wrote Boudicca’s Daughter with the aim of it being an adventure story - it encompasses rebellion, war and an epic journey across the Roman Empire - but on reflection, I think all historical fiction involves a degree of adventure, as reimagining the past is a journey into an unfamiliar world.

WNSF: Are there any particular books or authors which have made a lasting impact on you?

Elodie: There are many books and writers I deeply admire but the ones that made the most impact are those I encountered early in life. My childhood book would have to be The Lord of the Rings – an ability to recite chunks of it is even less fun for my long-suffering siblings now than it was when I was eleven. There have been other books I’ve loved more, but none that have been such an endless source of magic and imagination. 

The Latin poet Catullus burst onto the scene in my teenage years, upending my preconceptions about the Romans being dusty and old with his poems full of slang, sex, swagger and swearing. His writing changed the way I saw the ancient world and sparked my obsession with ancient Rome. When I wrote The Wolf Den decades later, I wanted to capture the sense of immediacy and lack of pomposity I first found in Catullus. 

At university I came across Elizabeth Cary, Mary Wroth and Amelia Lanyer, who wrote during the 1500s. Their mere existence was a revelation. At sixth form when we were studying Renaissance drama, one classmate had asked why the women put up with all the sexism on stage, why didn't they boo or chuck eggs? The teacher told us women in the past simply accepted their lot without question. I was depressed by this idea, but reading Mary Wroth made me realise women had not all meekly accepted their inferiority. Instead, they found many ways to resist - through humour, polemic or simply by refusing to stay quiet. This realisation is one of the reasons I remain so passionate about uncovering the lives of women in the past. 

WNSF: Can you tell us about any adventurous experiences in your life? Have they influenced you as a writer or your writing?

Elodie: I worked as a broadcast journalist for many years before writing fiction. Some of my experiences were adventurous in an obvious sense, such as undercover reporting into a controversial branch of Scientology or travelling to Berlin to record a documentary on the relationship between the Far Right and a particular brand of Hip Hop. But I think some of the biggest adventures involved much quieter, less obvious stories. In many ways, every day felt like an adventure, as it involved listening to people talk about their lives, and being granted the privilege of hearing about perspectives and experiences very different to mine. This aspect of journalism is certainly what has most informed my writing.

WNSF: The Librarians and Library Staff who read, reviewed and selected your book for the shortlist were really excited to ask some questions of their own. One said: 'I loved the way the character of Solina grew through this book, as well as the separation between public face and private person alongside the internal war inside a person - how you can love someone but still not forgive them. I was really interested to know how you were able to so immerse the readers in the Iceni life. I assume that they did not leave written texts behind them - so does that mean that all you tell us about them was essentially information from others who may have different understandings of their way of life?'

Elodie: Every surviving record of Boudicca and her daughters was written by Rome. The most contemporary account is by Tacitus, whose father-in-law had fought in the campaign against Boudicca. Tacitus gives us very little information about daily life among the Iceni, but one line really stuck with me; he tells us that the Britons didn’t distinguish between the sexes when choosing military commanders. Given it would have been unthinkable for a woman to rule as Emperor or lead legions into battle, this alone indicates a radically different social structure. We don’t have to take Tacitus’s word for this either, since the archaeological record holds plenty of evidence that women could wield significant power in ancient Britain. Evidence of matrilocality has been found in Dorset (meaning men joined their wives’ family) and women have been found buried with symbols of power and warfare at sites from Yorkshire to the Isle of Wight. They have even been found buried in war chariots, like the one Boudicca infamously rode into battle.

There is plenty of physical material which helped me imagine the Iceni world, even if their words are missing. There are weapons, coins and evocative household artefacts, such as the firedogs which sat over the hearth. I spent time studying the Snettisham hoard, a collection of beautifully wrought golden torcs which date to Boudicca’s time, and this year an Iceni war trumpet in the shape of a bellowing boar (called a carnyx) was found in West Norfolk. Similar carnyces have been found elsewhere in Europe, as the Iceni belonged to a broader ‘Celtic’ culture, and so I also borrowed designs and gods from other regions, as well as using stories from the Welsh Mabinogion to recreate their myths.

Another aspect of Iceni culture was the central role of Druids. The Romans were deeply prejudiced against druids, but stripping away their bias, we are left with the basic fact that this group of men (and women) were important to the practice of law, religion and learning. Very little is known of their specific rites beyond this, but we do know the recorded name of Boudicca’s husband was Prasutagus, which means ‘Magic-Chief’ - he may therefore have been a druid. I chose to make their eldest daughter a druid too, and named her Solina, a version of the ancient British name Solinus, which means ‘sight.’ I also chose to accept the Roman claim that the druids practised human sacrifice. This may have been slander, or it may have been true, but I found it a useful way to highlight how different the Iceni were to us; the past is a foreign country, after all.

WNSF: That's fascinating. Another said: 'Can you tell us about the decision to call the novel Boudicca’s Daughter? Was this because her daughters’ names weren’t historically recorded and you wanted to engage readers with a name they might recognise to indicate the fictional retelling? Solina’s story was heartbreaking and she regularly suffered for others’ decisions, in some way as her story was orchestrated by others and perhaps the title replicates her lack of agency in her own story during her time in Rome.'

Elodie: The title is a means of sign-posting readers towards a figure that people have simultaneously heard and not heard about; Boudicca is famous, her daughters much less so. Many readers are surprised they even existed. Tacitus recounts that their father, Prasutagus, who was a British client king for Rome, attempted to leave the Iceni kingdom to them both in his will, but Rome retaliated by attacking the two daughters and their mother, Boudicca. The three women then rode around East Anglia, mustering the rebellion, before sacking Colchester, London and St Albans. The daughters are unnamed in this account, and we are never told what happened to them after their mother’s defeat.

The title is also a way of reflecting how the real daughters of Boudicca have remained in their mother’s shadow over the centuries. Writing the novel was my attempt to address that. I started by naming them both – Solina and Bellenia – and then tried to reimagine their lives and experiences at a hugely tumultuous time and within a specific family. The mother-child relationship is also a very intimate one, so while ‘Boudicca’ was a public figurehead, she was also a private woman, a dichotomy I explore in the novel. After the failure of the rebellion, being ‘Boudicca’s daughter’ also takes on a radically different meaning for Solina in Rome, where this marks her out as being the child of one of the Empire’s most famous enemies. It is an inescapable legacy, one of pride, grief and danger.

WNSF: How did you make sure your characters, their voice and actions, sat comfortably within the historical context?

Elodie: Trying to recreate an ancient mindset for my characters is one of the aspects of writing I find most fascinating and challenging. The starting point for me is to read as wide a variety of Roman texts as possible, anything from graffiti, love poetry, plays, essays on government, personal letters or historical accounts. Where possible, I stick to writing which would have been contemporary to my characters. This hopefully gives me a sense of their worldview, some of which is ugly or alien to us, and some of which is more familiar. I also need to ensure that my characters do not support anachronistic ethics that might be very dear to me or my readers – in Boudicca’s Daughter that would be Feminism, the Geneva Convention, anti-colonialism and the abolition of slavery, to name a few! However, within that context, it’s important to reflect that real people (like Boudicca) did resist the status quo, even if they did this in an individual rather than systematic way. After reflecting on all this, I then spend time thinking about which aspects of human nature I believe to be timeless, such as the need for love, agency and revenge. This might look different for everyone. Fiction is an exercise in imaginative empathy, rather than literal truth.

WNSF: Can you tell us about a particular relationship between two characters in your novel and how you made it feel genuine?

Elodie: The attack on Solina’s family which Tacitus describes obviously had political implications, but in the novel, I wanted to think about how this would have played out as a family drama. Solina is the daughter of Boudicca, but she is also the daughter of Prasutagus, and it’s likely her parents were at odds in their attitudes towards Rome with Prasutagus favouring appeasement, and Boudicca preferring a more aggressive approach. At the book’s beginning Solina is a druid, like her father, and is also his favourite, while her mother is closer to her sister, Bellenia. As in all families where parental rivalries impact the children, I wanted to show Solina’s relationship with her father as an extremely complex one – she loves and admires him but is also uneasy at the sense of split allegiance. After his death, their relationship continues, as she must reassess all that he taught her.

WNSF: A strong sense of place is vital to any great adventure story. What role does research play in your writing? How did you make your setting feel realistic?

Elodie: A sense of physical place is vital to all my novels. The Wolf Den trilogy is set in Pompeii where so much survives, from frescoes to taverns, but clearly there’s not as much left of Iceni Britain! To recreate it I drew on my knowledge of the landscape of East Anglia, the wildest parts of the English countryside, and remnants of Boudicca’s time at Colchester Castle, the British Museum or Fishbourne Roman Palace. I also visited Butser Ancient Farm in Sussex which includes reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses, similar to those Solina would have known. To research the Roman side of the novel, I visited Nero’s Golden Palace in Rome, the Forum and Trajan’s Markets (among many places!) to try and get a sense of the sights Solina would have encountered. I find physical objects and paintings highly evocative too, and surviving Roman frescoes and mosaics always play a huge role in helping me visualise this period, giving a sense of how vibrant and colourful life would have looked. It was not the white-washed marble of the ruins we can see now.

WNSF: Thank you so much for answering our questions, and congratulations again on your shortlisting!

Buy the Book:

About the Author: 

Elodie Harper is the award-winning author of the bestselling Wolf Den trilogy, set in ancient Pompeii. The first book in the series, The Wolf Den, was a Waterstones Book of the Month, and the second, The House with the Golden Door, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Alongside her career as a writer, Elodie has worked as a reporter at ITV News and producer at Channel 4.

What Our Reviewers Said:

"From the very first pages, Boudicca’s Daughter seizes you and refuses to let go, delivering exactly what an adventure novel should: scale, danger, transformation, and that irresistible pull that leaves you with no choice but to get on board. There is such confidence in this writing. Honestly, I inhaled it. Fierce, transporting, emotionally charged, and completely immersive."

"Elodie Harper’s Boudicca’s Daughter is the best book I’ve read so far in 2026. This book has everything I could ask for."