Sheila Finch is best known as a Nebula-winning author of science fiction, but on a visit back to her first alma mater in Chichester, UK, she encountered a mystery that wouldn’t let her go. Who built the nearby magnificent Roman palace that was just now being excavated at Fishbourne, and why? Months of research later, she came up with a possible explanation that involved a sixteen-year-old Roman mother, a middle-aged Celtic king of a small tribe, and Emperor Nero’s secret plans:
Another, more popularly oriented (and much shorter) discussion of Celtic life by Simon James (with Valerie Rigby), has a different focus: Britain and the Celtic Iron Age. Like the longer, less specific to Britain version by this author, this one gave me a much greater “feel” for the life of my characters before and after the Roman conquest. It’s full of photos and illustrations of Celtic artifacts, many of them collected by the British Museum.
The Celts are seen as a family of European peoples who spoke related languages and shared many things in common, from art to aspects of religion and social organization. Was the British Iron Age simply part of this supposedly uniform, Celtic world, or was it something much more distinctive, complex, strange and fascinating than we have been led to believe? New research is promoting reappraisals of Britain's prehistory, in ways which challenge many ideas, such as that of a familiar Celtic past. This work discusses the many facets of the lives of Iron Age Britons, drawing on the wealth of…
I've been interested in feminine figures since I was a small, Catholic child presented with the Virgin Mary! Further down the road in graduate school and in my teaching career as an English Professor at a small Liberal Arts college, I began to research comparative mythology and the study of archetypes with a particular emphasis on the female divine. Now, after publishing three books and several articles on the goddesses, I'm happy to help others in their journey of discovery. I believe a good way to approach that study today is to focus on how our contemporary women writers portray goddesses in their works of fiction and non-fiction.
The Horse Goddess is a novel for anyone who loves horses!
It is the story of the Indo-European migrations in prehistoric central Europe, specifically in what is now Switzerland, where the lover of Epona, a young and spirited goddess, sweeps her away to his home, which is the plains of Russia.
Here, very far from home and anything that she knows, Epona experiences taming horses, riding horses, going into battle on a horse, and anything equine that remotely would inspire her to return home with her knowledge and gifts for her people.
Her journey is one that we can all relate to whether we are horse-people or not. It’s about the gifts of knowledge and creativity that a woman who becomes a goddess brings to enlighten her people.
On a personal note, the story is one that inspired me to the epiphany that being part of a culture and gifting…
The adventures and exploits of Epona--who flees her Celtic trible with the Scythian warrior, Kazhak, and battles the menacing Shapechanger--shape the legends that make her a goddess
Having edited 5 newspapers in North London a few years ago, I found that my love of reading–especially historical novels–expanded to writing once my business was sold to a well-known newspaper publishing company. All history fascinates me, as is obvious from my recommendations, and even though these could be listed as fiction, they all have a great deal of fact within them. I delved into historical reading as a very young girl and progressed from the Georgette Heyer novels to my current more in-depth novelists, so my range has been quite vast and varied over the years. I truly wish I had more time to read.
My interest in history once again comes to the fore in this book by Edward Rutherfurd. It is an epic saga that takes readers into the lives of five families in Salisbury, beginning in the Ice Age to 1985.
It follows two rival families who sought revenge on each other for over 400 years, whilst a stonemason’s family’s constructions spanned from the creation of Stonehenge to Salisbury Cathedral. It touches on the family of an exiled Roman soldier and an aristocrat who fell from grace, taking many generations for the family fortune to be revived.
This is a fascinating read, showing how the families, the land, and the buildings around them evolved and the skills that brought Salisbury to its intriguing place today. I found it a little heavy going at times, but it was well worth my perseverance.
'A high-speed cavalcade of our island story' DAILY EXPRESS 'Supremely well crafted and a delight to read' CHICAGO TRIBUNE 'A thundering good read' THE BOOKSELLER 'A richly imagined vision of history' SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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FIVE INTERCONNECTED FAMILIES
Sarum weaves an enthralling saga of five families - the Wilsons, the Masons, the family of Porteus, the Shockleys, and the Godfreys - who reflect the changing character of Britain.
CENTURIES OF TURMOIL AND TYRANNY
In a novel of extraordinary richness, the whole sweep of British civilization unfolds through the story of one place, Sailsbury, from beyond recorded time…
My passion for Celtic cultures, languages, and traditions comes from my family, where singing and storytelling were common. I worked as a singer and musician, and trained in Celtic Studies through Harvard University. That was an amazing experience, and research in Scotland and Ireland expanded my knowledge tremendously. I taught Celtic literature, mythology, and folklore at numerous colleges, and am Expert Contributor in Iron Age Pagan Celtic Religion for the Database of Religious History at the University of British Columbia, and invited Old Irish translator for the upcoming Global Medieval Sourcebook at Stanford University. I wake up every day excited to share the historical realities of these amazing cultures and beliefs!
This is an incredibly useful and totally indispensable resource that provides excellent translations of well-known and lesser-known writings about the Celts from the Iron Age and the Medieval Era.
Many people don't realize that there are really bad translations of some of these materials floating around the internet, and there's no need for that. The editors and translators of this classic anthology are top-notch, and whether the accounts or texts come from Greek, Latin, Gaulish, Old Irish, or Middle Welsh sources, students and enthusiasts can rely upon them.
Because it is a sourcebook, it doesn't provide any commentary, so that's important to know upfront (and fear not: see below). As such, some of the material may not make sense to some readers - or can lead to erroneous claims and inaccurate conclusions - if one doesn't know the history of the text, the historical context, and the secondary studies that…
A new edition of an invaluable collection of literary sources, all in translation, for Celtic Europe and early Ireland and Wales. The selections are divided into three sections: the first is classical authors on the ancient celts-a huge selection including both the well-known-Herodotos, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Diogenes Laertius, and Cicero-and the obscure-Pseudo-Scymnus, Lampridius, Vopsicus, Clement of Alexandria and Ptolemy I. The second is early Irish and Hiberno-Latin sources including early Irish dynastic poetry and numerous tales from the Ulster cycle and the third consists of Brittonic sources, mostly Welsh.
George Hagen is a Brooklyn writer who has written two adventure books for children about talking ravens. Hagen lived on three different continents by the time he was eleven, and developed a tremendous passion for folktales of all cultures from Africa, Egypt, Greece, Europe, and Celtic and Norse myth. His children's books were inspired by the myth of the Viking God Odin whose two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, flew around the land of ice and fire, reporting all the news. Hagen has appeared before hundreds of students, unraveling the secret mystery of riddles (modern and ancient) at schools from New York to Los Angeles.
Have you ever been curious about changlings, banshees, or megaliths? Have you wondered who, exactly, Merlin the magician was? It's all in Sofia Visconti's timeless tales. This book is a great guide to the Celtic, Irish and Scottish myths. It's like having an encyclopedia of magical beings at your fingertips.
The Norse God Odin was a relentless seeker of knowledge and wisdom, willing to sacrifice almost anything for this pursuit.
Odin's hunger for wisdom is evident in many of the stories that involve him, and I invite you to share his willingness to let go of your reality and jump into the mysterious worlds of Norse & Celtic Mythology and Runes.
Included in this Captivating 3 Book Collection are:
Runes: A Guide To The Magic, Meanings, Spells, Divination & Rituals Of Runes
Celtic Mythology: Dive Into The Depths Of Ancient Celtic Folklore, The Myths, Legends & Tales of The Gods,…
Sheila Finch is best known as a Nebula-winning author of science fiction, but on a visit back to her first alma mater in Chichester, UK, she encountered a mystery that wouldn’t let her go. Who built the nearby magnificent Roman palace that was just now being excavated at Fishbourne, and why? Months of research later, she came up with a possible explanation that involved a sixteen-year-old Roman mother, a middle-aged Celtic king of a small tribe, and Emperor Nero’s secret plans:
Absolutely invaluable and more narrowly focused, Miles Russell’s Roman Sussex. This one gives the reader great details of ruins and archaeological sites (there are scores of them -- villas and temples and city walls --to be found all around Sussex). I've visited many of these historical sites, both as a student and later. Some of these places are only just coming to light, often by accident as Fishbourne was revealed when a backhoe cutting a trench across an open field hit a section of Roman brickwork. There's also a good discussion here of the real Togidubnus, my protagonist, the Celtic king who was probably the first inhabitant of the enormous palace at Fishbourne.
Starting with the first named resident of the county, Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, Great King of Britain (with his palace at Fishbourne) and friend of the Roman emperor Claudius, this book reassesses the story of the Roman invasion of Britain and looks in detail at the earliest examples of Roman culture in Britain.
I have been a student of Druidry since the mid-1990s and I have also had a passion for history and mythology since I received a children’s version of “The Twelve Labours of Hercules” when I was around 7 years old. I’ve read pretty much all the major stories and texts in relation to Celtic myth and Druid lore (particularly from Ireland). I have spent the last 20 years studying the remains of Irish Druidism and how to incorporate it into modern practice is a respectful but relevant way.
Another golden oldie (from 1911) but seriously, most of the older books were written with a level of seriousness, diligence, and rigorousness that is sadly lacking in many of the modern books on Druidism – which I find frequently regurgitate or recapitulate fairly recent earlier books from the mid-late 20th century, often without delving into the original source material.
This book, again, is not exclusively about Druids but more generally about the religious culture of the Celts across Gaul, Britain, and Ireland. Even so, it is an immensely informative book, albeit somewhat difficult to read because of the fairly archaic style of the writing. As with other somewhat challenging books – the pay-off is certainly more than worth the effort.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been…
My first introduction to Ireland was in 1953 when my parents took the entire family over for two months. We stayed mostly in Dublin as "paying guests" with a threadbare, though incredibly proud, Anglo-Irish mother and her adult daughter in their decrepit apartment. What a learning experience for a seven-year-old boy! My fascination with the country's culture and history has never dampened, climaxed by my purchase of a 16th-century ruin, Moyode Castle, in County Galway, now finally restored. Over the years I have written seven books, six of them on Irish themes, plus innumerable articles in scholarly journals. The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland is my magnum opus as an Irish historian.
This fine introduction to both the Irish themselves, and their tortured history, was first published in 1947 by this respected commentator. The only way to really understand Ireland is to dissect the many distinctive population groups -- their peculiarities of religion, social outlook, political ambitions, and allegiances -- and then to see how the mixture of these complex streams determined the country's history, with positive but also calamitous results over many centuries. O'Faolain deals with the indigenous Celts, the interloping Normans, the increasingly acquisitive English, and how the tumultuous interactions between them produced the core of Irish society: its peasantry, the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the clergy, politicians, rebels, writers, and dreamers.
The only thing O'Faolain missed, because he didn't live to see it, was the emergent, and now dominant, middle class of the Celtic Tiger. A beautifully written book.
Loads of people want to be writers and the dream can come true! It did for me. So, I want to tell people about the books that have helped to turn me into a novelist. Initially, I wrote journalistic pieces about bizarre leisure activities for various British newspapers and magazines: I lay on a bed of nails, walked on red hot coals, met people who collect bricks as a hobby...and even lost my underpants while performing on the flying trapeze! (No kidding!) But my ultimate goal was always to become a novelist. Then, one day, I discovered the subject I just had to turn into a novel. And the result was...Death and Mr. Pickwick.
This novel was a massive influence on me. Rutherfurd takes the city of London as his subject, and follows the life of the city through the centuries, taking in Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Normans etc…right through to modern times. I don't have quite such a huge canvas in my book, but I do follow a series of historical events in a manner which is somewhat reminiscent of Rutherfurd. Rutherfurd takes you on a wonderful journey.
“A TOUR DE FORCE . . . London tracks the history of the English capital from the days of the Celts until the present time. . . . Breathtaking.”—The Orlando Sentinel
A master of epic historical fiction, Edward Rutherford gives us a sweeping novel of London, a glorious pageant spanning two thousand years. He brings this vibrant city's long and noble history alive through his saga of ever-shifting fortunes, fates, and intrigues of a half-dozen families, from the age of Julius Caesar to the twentieth century. Generation after generation, these families embody the passion, struggle, wealth, and verve of the…
I love British history. I am fascinated by ancient roots; legends and myths arising from around the Roman invasion. Stories of Boudicca, Casswallen, Celtic legends, and Arthurian tales hold me in a world of imaginings and anticipation. These exciting stories have been told and retold, but Cartimandua, Warrior Queen of Brigantia is new to me. She, a Yorkshire lass like me – led the largest tribe in Britain. I have become absorbed into the iron-age lives and loves of her Brigantia. The interwoven links between known facts and fantasy intrigue me. My favourite books here encouraged my journey of discovery; the old birthing the new. The legends from Britain grow.
I devoured this book with gusto. I guess we all seek a bit of magic sometimes.
When I read this book some thirty years ago, I had hit a rough patch. I wanted to escape the harsh reality surrounding me. The pages of this Celtic story transported me to a better place. You know the feeling, when fear drives you through heavy fog into the unknown? Once through, the landscape opens to excitement and promise.
Steven Lawhead used wonderful imagery to transport me to a time when warriors and kings held the future; when myths were the reality, and ordinary people became heroes. I want to live in a place where bravery and magic link hands. This is where ‘Song Of Albion’ led me. It’s my past and my future.
Wolves in Oxford; extinct beasts in Scotland: the barriers between our world and the Celtic Otherworld are breaking down. Two men are drawn into Albion, and changed for ever.
