Just Finished Reading: The Celts – A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe

With an Irish heritage on both sides of my family I see myself very much as a Celt (or at the very least of Celtic ancestry). I was intrigued, therefore, to see if this book would back up that claim. Fortunately it did which means that one of my personal ‘myths’ is a little safer from my default sceptical nature – probably caused by the very same Celtic genes [grin].

This small volume attempts to cover a great deal of ground and does it admirably. Well written and easily accessible for those, like me, with much more interest in the subject than knowledge about it this was both an easy and very informative read. Starting with the idea that contemporary ideas of Celtic-ness have a tendency to mean many things to many different groups the author goes in search of where the Celts came from and wonders if they indeed actually existed at all. Although the groups encountered by the Greeks and later fought by the Romans may not have called themselves Celts there clearly existed a widespread culture that, in hindsight, can be called Celtic. Roman accounts and later archaeological evidence supports the idea of an Atlantic seaboard culture extending from Hungary in the East to Ireland in the West. Despite the existence of local variations it appears that they held much in common from artefacts and even an understandable common language.

Today, after a period of Romanisation followed by a longer period of Christianisation we are left with the remnants of that culture in places such as Wales, which has managed to bring its distinct language back from the brink, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and parts of Brittany. It is likely, especially with the continued decline in European Christianity that the centres of Celtic culture will continue to grow as they look for deeper historical foundations. It is also likely that the idea of the Celt will be reinvented in other areas as the grip of the Church weakens and cultures struggle with ideas of national identity. The Celtic idea is far from dead for which I’m grateful. It’s nice to have such deep roots in European history.