The Celts

"The thing about Barry Cunliffe is that he’s written so many books on the Celts, and he’s clearly sweated a lot over these books. My impression with this book … my hypothesis is that he wrote it on a wet weekend and didn’t think too much about it. And I think it comes out so much better as a result. It’s just his reflections, his musings, and it’s a really fun read. That’s right. We have various interesting war leaders – Boudicca in Britain for example, just after the Roman conquest – and some of the figures I dredge up in the early part of my book are these Celtic tribal leaders from beyond the Alps that came crashing down to the Mediterranean in the early centuries BC. One of the fascinating things is that it’s very difficult for us to separate legend from history – we’re really honestly not sure with the early figures whether they’re real or not, whether they’re heroes from Celtic mythology or real historical individuals. It’s interesting that one of the early Celtic heroes was called Brennos, and he turns up about 15 centuries later in Welsh folklore – his name is Bran, which means raven, from which we get the legend of the ravens at the Tower of London. Boudicca is one of the few we can be sure about. Her name meant ‘victory’, a fairly common name, and she’s very well attested. But it looks as if legend and history did merge in her biography. So even if she existed, we can’t be absolutely sure how much of what’s written about her is true. Britain was conquered by the Romans in 43AD, and the first generation of Roman rule proves very onerous on the tribal Celtic societies of Britain. Boudicca is the great hope that the British Celts will be able to drive the Romans out of the island, and in 61AD this extraordinary civil war sets off in the Fens and in East Anglia, basically destroying everything Roman in sight. There are very, very vivid archaeological records, where we’ve found statues that have been decapitated by the tribal Celts. The tribal Celts were always very interested in what we call ‘the cult of the head’ – not only did they decapitate people but, in their anger against the Romans, they also decapitated statues. Then, of course, we have just levels and levels of burning in Eastern and South-Eastern cities across England, especially London; if you’re on the north bank of London and you dig down far enough you will come to the burning from the time of Boudicca, where basically the city was set alight. In the early 20th century, two boys went fishing in a river in Suffolk and actually fished up the head – a bronze head – of the Emperor Claudius, which would have come from the Temple of Claudius, near Colchester. This was one of these heads which had been decapitated by the Celtic warriors, and you can imagine these two boys’ faces when they found this great bronze head on the end of their hook."