Studying the ancient Celts is difficult. Because they lacked cultures of literacy until the early medieval period, we have had to depend on the testimony of classical Greeks and Romans for much of our information about the Celts during their antique heyday. But Caesar and Tacitus were hardly neutral observers, and neither were the later monks, humanists, antiquaries, historians, linguists, race scientists, novelists, neo-druids, and many others besides, who built their Celtic interpretations on classical foundations. By the time “Celtology” was born in the nineteenth century, many centuries’ worth of assumptions and errors (including some notoriously deliberate forgeries) had accumulated, and removing them—both to reveal the ancient Celtic core and to understand the ideological layers on their own terms—has been the purpose of the multidisciplinary venture we now call Celtic studies.

Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic Influence in the Construction of British Identities makes a distinguished contribution to the field, bringing together a number of experts who keep the classical record—in which the Celts are embedded—firmly in view throughout. Arising from a conference held in Oxford in 2016 and edited by a classicist and a Celticist, the volume features a synoptic introduction and ten essays that stretch from antiquity to the present. In their excellent introductory essay “Celts, Romans, Britons: Introduction,” editors Rhys Kaminski-Jones and Francesca Kaminski-Jones trace the intertwined threads of the classical and Celtic pasts in British thought and suggest that, rather than always trying to peel Celtic information away from classical sources, energy might be better spent by recognizing and considering this relationship in itself: “Though often defined in opposition to each other, concepts associated with the Celtic and the Classical were available for both combination and contrast in the creation of British identities, and it is the long history of these complicated (and often interdependent) processes that this volume seeks to investigate” (3). The connecting thread running through the book is therefore the way the classical-Celtic relationship contributed to the formation of different types of British identities at various periods. In this brief review I can only hint at some of the detail in these interesting and occasionally complex essays.

The subsequent two chapters (2 and 3) by Alex Woolf and Michael Bintley, respectively, address the way early medieval Britons and Anglo-Saxons dealt with the Roman past and “British” identity formation. The Trojan theme that emerges in chapters 4 and 5—by Helen Fulton and Philip Schwyzer, respectively—remains a presence throughout much of the book. As is well known, most European nations had some form of Trojan origin legend in the late medieval period, which was then replaced by more particularly national ancestry myths during the Renaissance, but these two chapters both dig more deeply into the British (and Irish) contexts. Fulton accounts for how the Trojan myth became incorporated into other British origins traditions; how it was employed differently in Wales, England, and Ireland for particular purposes; and how it supported English political claims to Britain independently of any prior “British” kingdom. Schwyzer's illuminating chapter shows the long legacy of the Trojan myth, demonstrating that it was not simply discarded once the sharper tools of humanist criticism were applied to it: it was too valuable, and it was particularly useful for James VI and I's quest to reunite Britannia, so to speak, and for London's self-image as a “New Troy” (88).

In the sixth essay, M. Pía Coira shows how classical allusion operated in early modern Scottish Gaelic poetry with particular attention to claims of Greek origin. A fascinating chapter by Mary-Ann Constantine, “Celts and Romans on Tour,” shows how travelers—in this case to the north of Wales and Anglesey—conjured up an image of the Celtic past by using classical sources (usually well-known portions of Caesar and Tacitus) when visiting cromlechs, groves, and other sites thought to be related to Druids. These well-known classical sources were invoked alongside other standard works by, for example, Gerald of Wales, Camden, Leland, Stukeley, and Thomas Pennant, so there was a canon that travelers could consult.

Jumping ahead to the turn of the twentieth century, Edith Hall detects a flourishing of dramatic and musical productions, which she documents and ties to themes of empire and British patriotism around the First World War. Arabella Currie shows how George Sigerson approached the problem of Celtic-Roman literary interaction—given the wholly asymmetrical source base—with special attention to ancient Ireland and the consequences for the Irish Revival around 1900; Sigerson devised intricate theories showing ancient Celtic influence on Roman verse via interaction with Druids like Diviciacus and a conjecture that Sedulius was Irish. Philip Burton's chapter is an impressively learned attempt to identify the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien's scholarship and historical opinions on his construction of “Crypto-Celts,” “Crypto-Romans,” and “Crypto-Roman Catholics” in his “legendarium” (179). The volume concludes with a reflective essay by Richard Hingley on Hadrian's Wall as a political symbol over time.

Celts, Romans, Britons covers a huge timespan, and one critical observation is that the early medieval chapters feel slightly disconnected from the rest of the essays (although they actually work pretty well together as a pair). However, this is obviously down to the nature of the subject matter and the fact that it is quite difficult to say anything about identity during that period (when references to Celts also vanished from the textual record), rather than deficiencies on the part of the scholars or editors. There is also little on the nineteenth century, when the idea of a Celtic identity really fluctuated, especially in relation to the Irish situation and Matthew Arnold's lectures on Celtic literature. And finally, the fixation on identity can at times be reductive, viewing artistic choices or scholarly interests solely as moves in a complex game of cultural politics rather than operating by their own internal logic. These quibbles take nothing away from the volume's overarching purpose—to show the intertwined legacy of classical and Celtic texts and themes—which is brought home in a variety of interesting and creative ways. Ambitious books like this are far too few, and Francesca Kaminski-Jones and Rhys Kaminski-Jones are to be applauded for herding cats from several different academic disciplines with disparate chronological expertise.