The Celts

by Simon Jenkins

Who were the Celts? Were they a people, a civilisation, an empire, or a fiction of historical imagination? They flit as ghosts through Europe's ancient past, purported ancestors of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Bretons. Yet they have never been identified with any one land, or with any one history or language. Simon Jenkins argues compellingly that the 'Celts' is a misleading concept, bundling together quite distinct peoples. The word keltoi first appears in Greek, applied generally to aliens or 'barbarians' - and theories of Celticism continue to fuel many of the prejudices and misconceptions that divide the British Isles to this day. Fascinating and increasingly relevant, who the Celts were - or weren't - goes to the heart of the ongoing argument over the future of a dis-United Kingdom.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Sociology, Politics, Archaeology, Ireland

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2022

About the author

Sir Simon David Jenkins, FSA, FRSL is the author of the international bestsellers England’s Thousand Best Churches and England’s Thousand Best Houses, the former editor of The Times and Evening Standard and a columnist for the Guardian. He is chairman of the National Trust.

Reviews

[mirabilos · Rating 1 out of 5]

From “Under the Ancient Oaks”:

「A book to avoid

I love recommending books that I find helpful. I generally ignore books I don’t like, but occasionally I come across something that needs a warning on it. One such book is The Celts: A Sceptical History by Simon Jenkins.

Celtic scholar and author Danu Forest said “I don’t believe in being the Celtic Studies police but this really is toxic nonsense and poor scholarship that was only published due to its emergence from the Westminster bubble.”

This review from Nation Cymru in Wales calls it “irresponsible” “lazy” and says “he makes elementary errors that could have been corrected by looking at Wikipedia. Overall, this is like reading an essay by a clever, ambitious but lazy and contrarian undergraduate, with far too high a regard for his own cleverness.”

Spend your money – and your reading time – elsewhere.」

[Owain Clarke · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seems to be entirely generated by the chip that Simon Jenkins has on his shoulder about Celts in general and the Welsh in particular. His journalistic output attests to this. You can't really expect to be taken seriously when you can't see the difference between historical research and ranting, and when you ignore rich sources that contradict your point of view. He is right that there has never been a strong Celtic polity, and that there has often been infighting, but I would be interested to learn of a people of whom that hasn't been the case. Despite the lack of political States, the cultural, literary and linguistic connections and emotional affinities between Celtic nations are much stronger than he states. There are long standing close links between Scotland and Ireland, between Wales and Ireland and Wales and Brittany, for example.

Simon, go and look at modern scholarship and save your opinions for the columns of newspapers.

[Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly one of the worst books I have ever read. This book is not about The Celts in any shape of form. It is purely about England’s victories over Scotland, Wales and Ireland. His condescending and patronising tone permeates through every chapter and the inaccuracies are astounding. Referring to Irish as a British language grates as does his stating that Ireland has been compensated for the Famine with a progressive Land Policy.
For the love of God do not, ever, buy this book!!!

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I clearly did not read the blurb before buying this book as I assumed it would mostly handle ancient history but I was wrong. In the 260 pages it covered the whole historical timeline of northern European people up to 2022. Because if this I felt like nothing was really covered with any depth or detailed argument.

However it was nice realising how close some parts of history are to others.

[Anthony Batterton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A deeply perplexing book. I was already familiar with the author through his journalistic work, and usually enjoy his articles, whether I agree with him or not. Unfortunately, I am forced to the same conclusion that C. S. Lewis reached about Freud: "when he is talking off his own subject and on a subject I do know something about...he is very ignorant." Jenkins is not an historian and this book is full of howlers, some of them minor muddlings of dates and sequences of events, some of them major misinterpretations. Most bizarre is his espousal of a theory that there was no meaningful Germanic invasion after the Roman withdrawal from Britain--not merely that there might have been some Germanic peoples settled here already under the auspices of the late Roman administration (which some historians think plausible), but that southeastern England, at least, was already Germanic when the Romans arrived. There is no evidence in archaeology or ancient literature for this, and much evidence against it. I was open to Jenkins' contrarian view that there never really was one distinct group called Celts, except perhaps in a loose linguistic sense, but this didn't actually turn out to be the main thrust of his argument. Over two hundred pages culminated in his argument for a federal UK. That's what this book was really about, to the extent that it was about anything. I'm giving it two stars instead of one, much like my last read, purely because the chapters on recent history were decently informative.

[T.S. Hottle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but Jenkins's premise, that there never really was a Celtic people, flies in this face of historical evidence to the contrary. Contrast with Marc Morris and Simon Schama, who cite reams of original sources for their English histories, and you're left with what amounts to a treatise on devolution in England.

"There were no Celts," Jenkins says. And he has Welsh blood.

I have a friend in Belfast and another in Galway who'd like a word.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

All over the place with Radom references to random bits of theory. I gave up.

[Sigy Artyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had some good bits - there is an interesting these at the bottom of this - but it was too brief, with confusing jumps in chronology, unfinished (unedited?) sentences, lacking depth of research and cohesion.
Also- no footnotes, which did not inspire confidence 🤔

[Margaret Warren · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK, but claims are made that I don't think were particularly well argued.

[Ieuan Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a to learn a bit more about my supposed ancestors in Britain pre Rome but got something different. It’s more of a history of Britain (& Ireland) with a much larger emphasis of the supposed ‘Celtic’ nations; Wales, Scotland, Ireland.

It slows down a bit towards the middle with the medieval period, but got a lot better as the book went on. Puts in crucial context the politics of Wales, Scotland and Ireland today.

Really good.

[Michael McCartney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book a bit confusing. It started off well and then there were jumps in topics. There was a serious lack of detail in most points and the end of the book drifted from celtic history to a broader Northern European history, specifically English history

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1847 the legendary Austrian statesman and diplomat Prince Metternich wrote to a colleague that "the word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has [no] political significance". This is perhaps understandable: a substantial slice of territory which fell into the lands covered by the geographical expression "Italy" were controlled by the Austrian monarchy, for whom Metternich worked. His job rather depended on the insistence that Italy amounted to a geographical-spatial rather than a political idea.

Perhaps unaware of Metternich's opinion, a parliament of deputies was assembled in Turin and on 17 March 1861 proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II the first King of Italy. By 1866 the Austrians had been hounded out of their last Italian territories in the Veneto and didn't have any cause to worry about what sort of expression "Italy" was any more anyway.

In 2021, Vladimir Putin produced an extraordinarily wordy essay expounding his strongly-held opinion that the word "Ukraine" is a purely geographical expression, which has no political significance, and that any political significance given to the geographical term is artificially imposed by the west. Mr Putin also confidently expected that, upon being liberated from their artificial political structure by the mighty Russian army, these Russians-misled-to-think-they're-Ukrainian would celebrate and revel in the return to mother Russia.

(It is interesting to note that Mr Jenkins has since 2022 regularly expressed some degree of sympathy for the Putinist viewpoint).

Perhaps unaware of Mr Putin's opinion, the Ukrainians have since rendered the Russian Black Sea Fleet inoperable, shot down enough Russian warplanes that the Russian Air Force can't operate in their airspace, imposed close to a million casualties on the invading army, and generally demonstrated with extreme prejudice that actually they're pretty sure they are Ukrainian and their interest in what kind of expression foreign dictators think "Ukraine" is could be written on an extremely small piece of, for example, toilet paper.

All of which is to say: there is a historical precedent for people from, as it were, here insisting that the people there are not what they say they are, it's all a myth or a fantasy or not a real thing, and so should sit down and shut up and do what the people here want them to do, not what the people there themselves want to do. The world is full of geographical expressions, and also full of political identities, and the two constantly intermingle and recursively form and reshape one another.

Simon Jenkins thinks that "Celt" or "Celtic" or "the Celts" is a kind of geographical expression. There are territories in Britain (and France) which have physical and linguistic traces suggesting similarity (with one another) and difference (from the central or dominant culture), which have been labelled Celtic. Jenkins doesn't especially take issue with this—he agrees that there's evidence of a certain similarity between Welsh and Cornish (Brythonic Celtic) and Irish and Scottish Gaelic (Goidelic Celtic), and that there's evidence of a Cumbric Welsh in the Old North, and so on. What he takes issue with is the idea that these peoples with loose, non-political connections in the past might use those alignments to identify themselves together now. Most particularly, that they might align together in opposition to a British or English identity.

One gets the sense, as Jenkins runs through the list of Celtic alignments and arguments-from-Celticness which are presently getting up his nose—Ireland's stunning success after independence; the belief that Scottish independence would be viable in close partnership with Ireland; the rejection of the United Kingdom's ability to tear entire Celtic countries (which voted no) out of the European Union because England voted yes—that Mr Jenkins largely doesn't like the whole "Celtic" thing because it doesn't feel fair. When the Celtic nations invoke their Celticness, merry England has nothing with which to hit back.

That is to say: Jenkins is arguing that "Celtic" is a purely linguistic-geographic expression with no political significance. He spends much of this book tracing the history of these Celtic peoples vis-a-vis England in an effort to show that they've rarely coordinated against the English. They didn't think of themselves as all Celts together. That's all very well, but it speaks to a fundamental fallacy in the way that people think about history. And that is this:

Just because people didn't do something in the past doesn't mean they can't do it now. Put another way: history is evidence of how things were in history, not of how they are, and certainly not of how they should be.

I'm happy to believe for the sake of argument that Mr Jenkins is right and not one person thought of themselves as a Celt with any kind of connection to other Celts in other Celtic populations around the British Isles right up until—I don't know, let's say the year 2000. Say that's completely and unshakeably true. Say, for good measure and for comparison, that Mr Putin was correct as well and pre-Maidan Ukrainians really were just Russians who'd been bamboozled by Western propaganda.

Even if all that were true, the Ukrainians still shot back in 2014, and shot back even more emphatically in 2022. There's no appeal to mediation on the basis of history; history is how we got here, not where we should be.

Even if it were true that Celticness was an invention of the early noughties as devolution and the accelerating collapse of the United Kingdom as a viable political entity created centripetal forces driving Scotland, Wales and Ireland to look elsewhere, Celticness is still here. Once we accept the very basic premise that history can only ever tell us what is, not what ought, Jenkins' project here becomes unmistakably quixotic. He's positioned himself in the same shoes as Metternich, informing the Italians that actually they aren't Italian, that's not a real thing, they just feel like they're Italian.

Ernest Renan tells us that "a nation is a daily plebiscite": nationhood is not a fixed entity, a thing out there in the world to discover and inspect. Nationhood is a continuous act of collective will. If people feel like a nation then they are a nation. Mr Jenkins doesn't like that many Celtic people increasingly feel that they are Celtic and have affinities with other Celtic peoples. He seems to think that their growing sense of Celticness poses a threat to his sense of Britishness, on which count he is probably—for a change—right. If he wants people to lay aside the Celticness and believe in Britishness, though, he would have more success if he gave up the scolding and instead put his efforts into generating a positive and convincing sense of Britishness for people to believe in.

Thus far, Jenkins other publications include England's Thousand Best Churches, England's Thousand Best Houses and A Short History of England, neatly illustrating both why he is so concerned about the non-English parts of Britain losing interest in the project and why the non-English bits of Britain feel solidarity with one another against as opposed to alongside the English.

Like Metternich's 1847 letter, this feels ultimately like the product of a thinker past their best-before date, operating with assumptions a half century old in a world where their information is no longer current and their perspectives are no longer relevant. Jenkins' thinking and positions are redolent with the now-ancient idea of great powers led by great men, bestriding the world like colossi while lesser powers cower beneath their skirts and mere people and beliefs trickle wherever the agents of empire tell them. That view was shown disastrously inaccurate in 1914; it would be comical if it wasn't so deadly in 2025. Russian soldiers continue to die for it as I write. Italy continues to operate as a modern political entity despite it. Mr Jenkins—and Putin, and Metternich—look rather like Cnut the Great, ordering the tide not to rise in ignorance of the real forces at work in the world around them.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to prove a negative. Jenkins sets out to prove that there’s no such thing as Celts. I think his target audience is “people in the UK, especially those who identify strongly with (putative) Celtic culture, and most especially those who have the idea that Celtic culture was a homogenous, pan-isles thing into which the Roman Empire intruded in classical times.

As a non-inhabitant of the UK, I lack the lifetime of identity-building in a British Isles context. Thus, I barely noticed the central thesis, let alone being offended by it.

In middle school I divined the basic shape of deep British history as involving the Romans, and then when they left, a mass invasion of England by the Angles and the Saxon tribes from east to west. As I discovered for the first time through my reading of Buried by Alice Roberts, this “history” is better characterized as a study in confirmation bias. There are no mass graves or destroyed villages of the type that would support a history of “population replacement”.

A lot of Welsh people seemingly believe that Welsh-speaking peoples once lived all across Britain from east to west, and were forcibly expelled by [Old] English-speaking peoples, that is, Saxons. More likely is it that the easterners spoke English and always had done. And there are still Cornish people resisting English rule. The last king of Cornwall, Dungarth, died in 875.

Jenkins starts with the Roman Empire and walks through the entire two thousand year post-Roman period. It gets a little mind-numbing through seemingly endless centuries of medieval battles, conquests, and alliances. It’s a lot of detail to establish a basic fact: imperial England expanded into a fragmentary landscape of different and non-cooperating cultures. Aside from Welsh and Cornish, and of course Gaelic, there were loads of other now-extinct languages like Attic, Doric, and Lallans. At no point did any of them consider themselves allied with each other against the English, and most certainly not as a unified Celtic people. Go back far enough and Wales devolves into distinct north/south cultures, and the Scottish Highlands were culturally very distinct from the lowlands.

A lot of what we perceive as Celtic culture today was resurrected (one could say invented) in the 19th century. Sir Walter Scott transformed the Highlands into a land of exotic excitement. Various Celtic revival societies devolved into fancy-dress gatherings. By the 20th century, JRR Tolkien averred that the concept of Celticism was no more than a name into which you dump anything you want.

Fun fact: the Saxon word for foreigner is wealh. Hence, Welsh = foreigner. The conquered peoples of the British Isles are/were “the first British Empire”.

Jenkins careers through history right into the present day. News flash: the history of the UK is still being written. Brexit is a recent development whose consequences have not yet fully evolved. Brexit can be seen as a kind of reverse devolution: England separating itself from its confreres. The English penchant for union via enforced assimilation largely precluded the alternative of confederal institutions. Political respect was given too little, too late – allowing deep discontents to fester and grow for generations.

Lurking beneath Jenkins thesis is a sense that a lot of people are fomenting division on the basis of made-up myths of Celtic identity, an identity which is mostly if not entirely a modern construct of mythmaking. The real history involves so much pointless bickering, a lot of it over fine points of religion, that it is hard to make a rational case for giving any modern credence to it. Everyone wants to be Welsh, but FFS, can we just get over it and be English?

[user · Rating 1 out of 5]

Usually not one to rate books that I haven't yet finished, but I think an exception can be made in this case.
Really don't know where to begin with this book, if one can even call it that. Utterly senseless prose, stacking irrelevant information on top of each other that Jenkin usually forgets he has to make an actual point in each body of words. Any single subchapter within the first 50 pages will likely contain a reference to neolithic Britain, Roman-occupied Britain, the Middle Ages and contemporary politics. Keep in mind that these are usually only a page in length each. These little factoids lack any clear purpose whatsoever, throwing names and dates all over the place you can only get the clear impression that Jenkins barely skimmed his sources, forgetting to make an actual plan for how he would format the text. I really can't stress just how disorganized this piece is.
Then you've got the willful misrepresentation of history to prop up Jenkins' personal contemporary politics, a near 19th-century disdain for the Irish language, lack of footnotes, and, just the general atmosphere that he lacks actual understanding of the events he references. The cute little note in the foreword, where he describes the book as 'not being a historical text' (to paraphrase) was a handy disclaimer to let me know the attitude to which I should approach reading it, but given that in all other regards the book advertises itself as being a history of the Celtic people (or lack thereof) doesn't really save it.
39/261 - maybe I'll pick it up again, but I'd rather not waste my time reading something that can so easily be picked apart as a poorly-made propaganda piece.

[Richard Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written and illuminating history. As a born and bred Englishman, I had taken the term “Celt” to mean pretty much anything non-English in the British Isles (lumping Scottish, Irish and Welsh together…). Of course, it doesn’t take much of a delve into history to know that each nation and people have rich, varied and individual stories and cultures.

My key takeaway from Jenkins’ book is the blowing away of the notion of Celts being a surviving remnant of the “ancient Brits”, who were displaced in England by the Anglo-Saxons. Jenkins points to the evidence (backed up by DNA studies) that says the early settlers of (what is now) Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales and Scotland were a distinctly different group, coming from the Atlantic coasts up from Iberia, to the peoples of England who had more in common with the north and central Europeans. The, so-called, ancient Brits of England were not so different from the Anglo-Saxons which, possibly, made their assimilation more nuanced than the old myth of being conquered by the Anglo-Saxons.

My main lesson from these histories of where we came from and the earliest origins of what we think of as nations is that nationalist rants of populist politicians etc are just rubbish. We are who we are right now; trying to pin your identity to some distant notion of who you’re ancestors were is futile.

[Der Der · Rating 1 out of 5]

This isn't a work of academic history, or even of popular history, it's a political polemic on the contemporary politics of the United Kingdom from a British nationalist viewpoint.

To begin with, the premise that the Celts made up a singular race or ethnic group hasn't been a widely accepted viewpoint academically for decades, so he's not exactly touching any new ground for anyone familiar with the topic.

On top of that, writing about the 'Celtic myth' while also putting forward your own ahistoric nonsense, such as suggesting the Anglo-Saxons were present in England before the Roman invasion of Britain, is odd. To quote the author 'why do the English not speak Welsh? The answer must be because they speak English and always have’. That is total, abject nonsense not backed by a single shred of evidence. Laughable.

There's also the dismissive and chauvinistic way he talks about the Irish language, and the culture of Wales, Scotland and Ireland more broadly. This is nothing but a political rant by a clearly biased party. The disproving of the 'Celtic myth' is more about delegitismising Irish, Welsh and Scottish political movements than anything else.

The author also doesn't seem all to concerned with referencing his assertions at all. The very basic ideas of academic rigour are apparently below him.

This is a simplistic, sloppy, partisan waste of time.

[William Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read, very brief history of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland framed around their relationship with England rather than their insular selves or relations with each other/greater Celtia. Aims to be an essay to disprove the idea of a single Celtic people, but doesn’t provide many arguments aside that the nations should be treated individually.

Full of interesting facts and tidbits, but impossible to go into any depth in the page lines and often glosses over the history trying to fit everything in. Coupled with bouncing around the chronology makes it sometimes difficult to follow or recall things previously raised.

Doesn’t go into what Celtic identity means in the modern sense but rather how Britain should tackle this shared identity from a governance perspective. Overall I’d like to see more arguments against a shared Celtic identity and what this means in the modern sense. Cornwall and Brittany are barely mentioned, and Isle of Man not at all, which seems like a glaring gap in the storytelling.

Opinionated, with own theories brought in, and carries some of the author’s own beliefs and biases. History is a good overview but the arguments against a Celtic identity are mostly absent.

[Murdo Murchison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and worth a read. As Simon sets out from the begging he is taking a sceptical approach to the generally, and historically, accepted idea that there was a single ‘Celtic’ people. In his introduction he rightly emphasises that there are key and distinct differences between the different peoples of Britain. He runs through the history of Britain to show the differences between the Gaelic (Scot’s and Irish), Welsh, Cornish, Pictish, and Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of Britain. He later goes in to the modern politics of the different British nations. To some this will annoy. To some it will challenge. As a Scot I was pleased that he showed the distinct differences and between the different celtic cultures in Britain (and even in Scotland) which give nuance to the dismissive concept of a single Celtic people of Britain.

I only give it four stars as he does meander a bit through history and jumps between the different peoples. He perhaps tries to cover too many points and events in a relatively short work. It would perhaps benefit for being a larger work covering all the detail he would like or more focused on specific points.

[Matthew Barnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up on impulse, I need to stop doing that. Books that condense vast history into short volumes often feel superficial, and Celts is no exception. The author lacks the academic grounding to justify many of his speculations. Scholars usually avoid overreaching, something I dont think Jenkins’ is worried about.

That said, some criticisms may be unfair. If you know the author and understand the book’s aim (more cultural commentary than history) it’s short, with some interesting trivia, and contributes to the timely conversation about identity.

Still, Jenkins doesn’t help himself with the title. For a book called Celts, there’s little about them. Gaels and Saxons are referenced just as much, if not more. The most topical point may be how “Celt” is used in modern discourse rather than the peoples themselves.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you want a good book on Celts, read Alice Roberts’ earlier publication.

[William D · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting initial premise - that a unified celtic identity is not historically accurate, but it becomes a long tale about how the celts kept getting battered and controlled by the english, and that the english were just initially better suited to run the place, and that it was a shame that a federal solution for the isles didnt work out, effectively concluding with a plea for devolution.

Others have said it is not very accurate and looking at his pedigree I can see why they would have come to that conclusion, but I don't know enough to say either way. He does really knock on the welsh quite a lot though as almost lazy, paints scotland as a constantly revolting rump state and Ireland as a tragic tale of failed foreign policy for the english, and washes over the horror and implications of their rule for the catholic Irish, nor the influence of scots and irish over the rest of the continent.

Wouldnt necessarily recommend, got cause of the cool cover.

[Bob Delaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the title I was expecting a history of the Celts, their origins, migrations, language, culture and interactions with other ethnicities and civilizations. The author begins by expressing doubt that the Celts actually existed and most of the book (up to 68% through when it ends) concerns the relationship between the Scots, Welsh and Irish with the Anglo-Saxon English up to modern times.

As soon as I finished the book (unwilling to read the rest of the book which were references which the author at the beginning book said he would not use) I bought 'The Celts Search for a Civilization' by Alice Roberts.

One thing he agrees with me about is that Great Britain needs to reorganise as a Federation (republic). If England isn't to dominate because of its population then it should be divided into four or five states roughly mirroring the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - it would give us a flag to wave!!

[Matthew Whyndham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting indeed. As someone who grew up in one of the so-called Celtic regions I concur with the basic thesis. Welshness is definitely a thing, or rather cluster of things, but it wasn’t at all obvious that was the same thing as Scottishness or Irishness. The more important question is what to do about any of these strands of identity, culture and, especially economics. The answer of course involves some questions (language, culture, identity, money) about the elephant in the room, England.

[Matt Barker · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read this book, I was hoping to get a little more knowledge about the Celts, especially some of their pre-history. And while there is certainly that in this, it begins to feel less about them and more about the British. I thought that I was perhaps just not getting it since I don't have a lot of knowledge about England, Ireland, Wales, or Scotland, but reading some of the other reviews, I can see I'm not alone.

There are some interesting things in this book, but for the information I was looking for, it felt lacking.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middling book that was interesting in parts, boring in others and provocative at times. The title is really unwarranted. The first quarter ask the question as to validity of the whole notion of the Celts as an entity, and, unlike the onslaught of 1 star reviews (one of which tells Jenkins he should have consulted Wikipedia!), I am persuaded by the author’s arguments. The rest of the book is an attempted synthesis of Welsh, Scottish and Irish history with occasional mentions of Cornwall and the Isle of Man. The writing is often a little dry and pompous, just like my perceptions of the man.

[Izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book at the start. It goes through British history starting from the Celts and goes through it all. However I wanted a book on celts and celtish history and thought that’s what I was getting. This didn’t happen towards the end and instead I got a lot of political and other stuff that I didn’t find interesting or relevant to the purpose of this book.

[MyChienneLit · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Celts is a serious, scholarly work of nonfiction, but it is easily accessible to the layperson. In this book, Jenkins dispels the myth of a monolithic Celtic people. If you have an interest in anthropology, sociology, linguistics, or the history of Ireland and the United Kingdom, you will enjoy this book. Otherwise, honestly, it’s probably not going to be your thing.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm only 15 pages in and I'm bored out my head reading this book so I've gave up.I feel like the author is just giving me his point of view and not any actual research or accuracy.
I've also read similar reviews to what I've just wrote so it's not just me that thinks this way.

[Adrian Shanks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. More a potted history of England's relations with its western neighbours than an examination of the evidence/ or lack of for the existence of a "Celtic" people as a distinct entity. Not sure I'd recommend it.

[Roland M · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting account of the Celtic nations within the British isles and their relationship with England.

A political argument for federalism within the UK.

Boring at time.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so dull I couldn’t finish it. Abandoned on page 72.