Boudicca was queen of the Iceni, a people in the east of Britain, in the first century. After the Romans took her land and treated her and her daughters cruelly, she led a huge rising against them around AD 60. Her army burned Roman towns, including the place that became London. The Romans later beat her; she died that same year, or the next. In pictures and statues she is almost always driving a chariot, hair flying — that is the story Britain likes to tell. You will also see the older spelling Boadicea on statues and in older books; it is the same woman. Historians now prefer Boudicca, closer to her Celtic name. This is a proper name, not a word you use for “a fierce woman” in careful English, though people sometimes stretch it that way.