The Celts - by Ian Stewart (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A new history of the Celts that reveals how this once-forgotten people became a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and France

Before the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turkey. Celts registered deeply on the classical imagination for a thousand years and were variously described by writers like Caesar and Livy as unruly barbarians, fearless warriors, and gracious hosts. But then, in the early Middle Ages, they vanished. In The Celts, Ian Stewart tells the story of their rediscovery during the Renaissance and their transformation over the next few centuries into one of the most popular European ancestral peoples.

The Celts shows how the idea of this ancient people was recovered by scholars, honed by intellectuals, politicians, and other thinkers of various stripes, and adopted by cultural revivalists and activists as they tried to build European nations and nationalisms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long-forgotten, the Celts improbably came to be seen as the ancestors of most western Europeans--and as a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and France.

Based on new research conducted across Europe and in the United States, The Celts reveals when and how we came to call much of Europe "Celtic," why this idea mattered in the past, and why it still matters today, as the tide of nationalism is once again on the rise.

Review Quotes

"[An] Impressive and original book, boldly conceived, powerfully researched, and lucidly written. . . . [It] will be essential reading for anyone interested in understandings of the Celts and the appropriation of their legacy over the past five centuries."---Huw Pryce, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies

"[A] magnificent book. . . . An enormously impressive and often witty account of the development of Celticism."---Mark Williams, History Ireland

"[A] radical and definitive study."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer

"[A] sweepingly authoritative study. . . . Readers will embrace so diplomatic an author, and this big, dense book will serve most of those readers not only as the grandest possible report on the current state of Celtic studies but as, one can only hope, a death-knell to the kinds of cheaply sentimental pseudo-histories that usually haunt this subject."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review

"A capacious survey of the idea of Celticism since the eighteenth century, exploring the contested concepts of race, nationalism, prehistory and cultural revival with scholarly verve and powerfully demonstrating the effect on the present of ideas about the past."---Roy Foster, Times Literary Supplement

"A fine piece of scholarship. . . Stewart's exposition is clearer than many recent books on the subject and is thoroughly commended."---Stewart Rayment, interLib

"A readable, engaging account of the ups and downs of an idea that has had a huge impact not only on British and Irish culture but on the world."---James Holloway, Fortean Times

"A scholarly and impressive book."---Jody Joy, Current Archaeology Magazine

"A History Today Book of the Year"

"A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year"

"An engaging account of three distinct stages of Celtic studies. . . . Remarkable."-- "Choice"

"An iconic people receive a scholar's attention. . . . Definitive and encyclopedic."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"Breathtaking. . . . The book displays an impressive maturity of judgment, an awe-inspiring panoramic breadth and granular depth of erudition, and a formidable capacity to organise a sprawling range of material."---Colin Kidd, Intellectual History Review

"Scholarly and very readable."---Patrick Sims-Williams, Times Literary Supplement

"Simultaneously intellectual and (very) readable, The Celts - A Modern History really is. . . . magisterial."---David Marx, David Marx Book Reviews

"Stewart builds on recent scholarship to make a compelling case for the significance of modern Celticism, in all its paradoxical glory. . . . A big, ambitious, erudite book."---Rhys Kaminski-Jones, History Today

"Stewart elucidates a clearer understanding of the Celts through disciplines such as linguistics and archaeology."-- "Library Journal"

"To examine and to understand the origins, interactions, and consequences of [Celtism], then, is the demanding task the author of this book has set himself. It can only be said that Ian Stewart has succeeded masterfully. . . . Without a doubt, Ian Stewart has written an excellent book that has placed the discussions around this complex topic on a much more historically informed, dispassionate, and sophisticated level: an impressive feat of arms."---Alderik H. Blom, History of Humanities

"Vivid . . . Ian Stewart takes an imaginative, scholarly look at Celticism and its shifting interpretations."---Linda Colley, Financial Times

About the Author

Ian Stewart is an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.