Sting’s 1991 song “All This Time” is one of the most upbeat-sounding tracks on The Soul Cages, but the whole album came out of grief. His father died in 1987, not long after his mother, and Sting has said he was stuck with writer’s block until he went back in his mind to the River Tyne and the Wallsend shipyards where he grew up.
Wallsend gets its name from the end of Hadrian’s Wall, built by the Romans around AD 122 to mark the northern edge of their empire. The Roman fort of Segedunum stood right where the shipyards would later rise.
That’s why a calm sunset over the river fits the song better than Sting’s own video did. The river is what lasts while people, and even empires, pass. It’s the same idea we teach about the Romans: they came, built their wall, and left, and the Tyne kept flowing.
I’ve rebuilt my old lesson on the song as an animated activity, with Roman fact cards, timed lyrics and a short Roman quiz at the end: All This Time on Dueling History.
Ask your class: what did the Romans leave behind in Britain, and what has stayed the same for two thousand years?
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