Format: Paperback
Published: October 5th, 2015
Age: Adult
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Rating: 5/5 Stars
This has been on my TBR for a good while, and I was really glad I finally got to it. ‘Celts’, as a whole, are a tricky subject. There are many people who claim to be ‘Celtic’, but even now there’s a lack of understanding behind what that word means – or should mean. In The Celts, Alice Roberts details the complexities in unearthing ‘Celts’, and takes the reader on a journey across Europe, exploring various archaeological finds and diving into what these add to our understanding of these mysterious peoples.
Roberts makes clear right from the start that when it comes to the people we call the ‘Celts’, we could mean a lot of very different things. The whole book is an exploration of why the Celts are so hard to pin down, outlining persistent theories that over time may have been proven incorrect, or at least more open than previously thought, yet which still have a hold on the understanding of the Celts.
There’s a lot here, but even then we’re missing part of the picture; there are gaps, in the ways the Celts lived, but it’s largely because Roberts doesn’t seem to want to put anything on the page that isn’t backed up by the evidence. Occasionally, she does dive into a possible ‘scene’ that could have played out, but this is very much written as a “what if” instead of a “this happened”. It adds an interesting layer, but so do the remarkable discoveries Roberts lays at our feet.
You’re not going to come away from this book with an incredibly deep knowledge of exactly who the Celts were, but it’s accessible and enjoyable enough to serve as an excellent starting point. Roberts also provides other sources at the back, and it very much feels like a ‘gateway’ book, giving you the building blocks to allow you to form your own thoughts, but pointing you in the direction to gather more, too.
Reading Challenge
Be curious – Non-Fiction Challenge 2025
Prompt: Anthropology – People long dead still have to tell interesting stories
Progress: 3/12
Unwrapping Words 