HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-12-12T08:55:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
items: Geoffrey of Monmouth: the lost voice of ancient Britain
items: What’s the real history behind ‘Britannia’?
items: Is Boudica buried at Platform 9¾?
items: Celtic myths: the tales that might have inspired Star Wars and Harry Potter
items: Who were the Celts?
items: The genius of the Celts

The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
type: item
date: 2025-12-12T08:55:00.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Celts
subject: Column
subject: Medieval life
description: "The Book of Kells is a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting", writes Michael Wood
encoded: The Book of Kells, one of the greatest pieces of medieval art, is today displayed in the library of Trinity College Dublin. This illuminated gospel book is named after the monastery in County Meath where it was kept in the Middle Ages. It’s a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting, with its Celtic knot patterns, scintillating colour, and the staggering intricacies of the display pages and canon tables – all smoky golden magnificence. An Irish annalist called the book “the great Gospel of Columcille [Columba], the chief relic of the western world”. It may be the work described by the historian Gerald of Wales in the 1180s, in his book on Ireland. “Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art,” he wrote. “You will make out intricacies so delicate and so subtle… that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.” The book survived war, plunder and the English – Cromwell’s troops were once billeted in Kells. In the 19th century, it was a huge influence on the Celtic revival movement in the arts, and today is seen as the pinnacle of the western tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life The book was produced around the end of the eighth century, just at the moment Britain and Ireland were about to be changed forever by the arrival of the Vikings. It was long believed to have been created on Iona. But in The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma, published in October, Victoria Whitworth suggests that it was actually written at the Pictish monastery of Portmahomack on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland. This is one of the least known areas of the medieval British Isles. The Pictish monasteries were destroyed in the Viking age, and with them virtually all written records. The kingdom of the Picts became part of the Scottish kingdom of Alba in the ninth century, and gradually the memory of the Picts faded, leaving many unsolved mysteries. One key …

Femke-de-Jong-Kellswebready-41cfeb5-e1765365539960.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1000

Geoffrey of Monmouth: the lost voice of ancient Britain
type: item
date: 2020-07-22T09:16:06.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Celts
subject: Roman Britain
description: For centuries, Geoffrey of Monmouth's medieval history of the British Isles has been cast as a work of pure make-believe. Yet, says Miles Russell, look beyond the tales of wizards and giants and what you have is a priceless insight into what life was really like for the inhabitants of Celtic Britain
encoded: “Favourable winds brought the Trojan Brutus to the promised isle, which at that time was called Albion. It had no inhabitants save for a few giants. This pleasant land led Brutus and his companions to settle there and, after driving off to mountain caves any giants they encountered, they divided it up and portioned it out. Brutus named the island Britain after himself and called his followers Britons” - So the 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth described how Britain first came to be discovered, named and settled. Compiled in around 1136, Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) is an epic, which chronicles the rulers of Britain from earliest times until the seventh century AD. Containing characters such as Cole (the merry old soul), Lear and Cymbeline (both later immortalised by Shakespeare), as well as Arthur, Merlin and Mordred, the Historia was a medieval bestseller, and its influence upon European culture cannot be overstated. Who was Geoffrey of Monmouth? We know next to nothing about Geoffrey but it would appear that he was either born or spent a significant amount of time in Monmouthshire, at the borderlands between what is now England and Wales, in the early years of the 12th century. He was certainly familiar with the geography of the area – the Roman fortress town of Caerleon, near Monmouth, appears many times in the Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey spent most of his working life in Oxford, his name appearing on a number of charters there between 1129 and 1151, where he is referred to as magister or teacher. Geoffrey apparently conceived the Historia at the request of Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, in order to provide the British with their own heroic mythology: a national epic to rival any produced by the Saxons or Normans. It is thanks to his Historia that Geoffrey is widely remembered as the man who, more than any other, created and popularised the myth of King Arthur. The Historia features, for the first time, the …

GettyImages-601070190-e3968de.jpg
width: 6410
height: 3272

What’s the real history behind ‘Britannia’?
type: item
date: 2018-01-17T09:26:20.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Celts
subject: Roman Britain
subject: TV interest
description: It's AD 43 and the Romans are coming. With the advertising tagline "No one wants to be civilised", Sky Atlantic's new sword and sandals TV series Britannia is about to invade our living rooms with – if the trailers are to be believed – more than a fair smattering of orgiastic violence, fire and blood. Here, archaeologist and author Miles Russell previews the coming season
encoded: The Roman invasion of Britain is an event which, perhaps rather strangely, has yet to be featured much in either TV or film. There have been any number of cinematic outings (as well as documentaries and books) about Queen Boudica, who led an uprising against the Romano-British government in AD 60/61 destroying the cities of Colchester, London and St Albans – but the initial stages of conquest have been largely ignored. Britannia, written by Jez Butterworth, suggests that this is all about to change: the publicity promises swords, sex, carnage and “a country dominated by powerful druids and warrior queens”. Whilst both the costumes and setting look reasonable (so far), how much of the series is actually drawn from real events? Here’s what we do and don’t know about the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43. Who were the Celtic Britons? At the time of the invasion, Britain was an island which was politically fragmented, with multiple tribes each led by a chief, king or queen who – if we believe Roman writers – were constantly at war with one another. Some of the names of the British tribes, such as the Cantiaci (of Kent), the Trinovantes (of Essex) and the Durotriges (of Dorset), were preserved by the Roman government when they built brand new towns to win the hearts and minds of the indigenous population. Unfortunately, we know very little about the customs, lifestyle, outlook, language or religion of these individual tribes. Some had leaders who actively traded with the Mediterranean world, exchanging locally-produced cattle, grain, metal and slaves for wine, olive oil and exotic forms of glassware and pottery. Others seem to have actively opposed any kind of Roman influence. Why did the Romans invade Britain? The Roman Empire, which in the early 1st century AD stretched from Spain to Syria, was a resource-hungry superstate and Britain, on its north-western frontier, was a hugely attractive target. This was a land rich in metals (especially iron, tin, lead and gold), c…

PP 22 Britannia S01-d4a700d.jpg
width: 799
height: 531

Is Boudica buried at Platform 9¾?
type: item
date: 2016-01-20T16:14:41.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Celts
subject: Roman Britain
description: How and when the Celtic Queen met her end has been lost to history, but could one of the rumours over her burial place have inspired JK Rowling?
encoded: Not long after the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, Boudicca became the Queen of the Iceni (a powerful tribe in modern-day Norfolk). In AD 60, she led her warriors in a revolt against Britain’s Roman rulers and was initially very successful. Her forces utterly destroyed the cities of Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans), and amassed a huge following of other Britons looking to throw off Roman control. Boudica: scourge of the Roman empire The Celts: unpicking the mystery She was finally defeated in a battle to the north-west of London, somewhere along Watling Street. Roman sources claim that a force of only 10,000 soldiers stood against 230,000 warriors – which is most likely exaggerated but there is no question that she had hugely superior numbers. In his 1937 book Boadicea – Warrior Queen of the Britons, Lewis Spence suggested, with no real evidence, that the opposing armies had fought on land now occupied by the railway stations of King’s Cross and St Pancras. The Roman historian Cassius Dio, writing over a century after the battle, suggested that, in defeat, Boudicca “fell ill and died” before her followers put on a lavish burial. In truth, this seems unlikely, as Dio provides no source for the claim and, in the aftermath of the revolt, the Iceni fell victim to brutal and relentless reprisals. This hasn’t prevented people searching for a grave, and the myth that her final resting place lies somewhere beneath platforms 9 and 10 of King’s Cross – probably thanks to Spence’s book – is still popular. Given this specific location, the story appears to have inspired JK Rowling, who famously placed the departure point of the Hogwarts Express at King’s Cross Platform 9¾. It is unclear whether the 2,000-year-old Queen has ever attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine

118.-GettyImages-694243226-41b80a6-e1574266124853.jpg
width: 1024
height: 691

Celtic myths: the tales that might have inspired Star Wars and Harry Potter
type: item
date: 2015-12-02T15:52:05.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Celts
description: Tales of monsters, Gods, spells and love affairs: Celtic myths reflected the social thinking and traditions of pre-Roman Celts of Britain, Ireland and Europe. Spread by travelling poets and storytellers who plied their trade from village to village, the myths came into being partly to explain natural phenomena, and to try to address basic human concerns about life and death. This article was first published online in January 2015
encoded: Miranda Aldhouse-Green, an expert in archaeology and shamanism, reveals how traditional Celtic characters and symbols can even be found in contemporary popular culture series such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. Here, writing for History Extra, Aldhouse-Green recalls five of the most fascinating Celtic myths… In the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries in Ireland and Wales were the engines of literacy and education. Many monks took it upon themselves to record pagan myths and legends dating to pre-Christian times, leaving us a rich legacy of gods, goddesses, supernatural heroes, enchanted animals and magical objects. But their Christian chroniclers seasoned these stories with a heavy sprinkling of early Christian ethics, so mythic warfare tended to end in disaster; amoral and over-powerful women inevitably came to grief, and good usually triumphed over evil in the end. It is generally accepted that these myths were first written down between the 8th and 12th centuries AD. The two most important groups of Celtic myths are found in the Welsh Mabinogion and the Irish Táin Bó Cuailnge (more popularly known as the Cattle Raid of Cooley). Pagan Celtic myths were originally transmitted orally, by storytellers who acted both as travelling entertainers and as peddlers of news. But the origins of the myths were probably very ancient indeed. Like most mythic traditions, they came into being partly to explain natural phenomena, including disasters such as floods, famines and plagues, and to try to address basic human concerns such as ‘who are we? Why are we here? Who came before us? What happens to us when we die?’ But Celtic myths tap into another hugely rich vein of tradition: the pantheon of gods and goddesses worshipped by the pre-Roman Celts of Britain, Ireland and Europe, between about 500 BC and the Roman period. Thus, for instance, we find the Celtic horse-goddess, Epona, who was venerated over huge areas of Roman Europe, transformed into the iconic figure of Rhiannon, the…

celtic-myths-2-a77807a.jpg
width: 800
height: 530

Who were the Celts?
type: item
date: 2015-11-05T11:32:19.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Celts
subject: Roman Britain
description: Historians have been puzzling over this most enigmatic of ancient peoples for centuries, but are we any closer to establishing their origins? Barry Cunliffe investigates...
encoded: “The whole race… is war-mad, high-spirited and quick to battle… And so when they are stirred up they assemble in their bands for battle quite openly and without forethought.” So wrote the Greek historian Strabo about the Celts at the beginning of the first century AD. It is a generalisation that has coloured our view of the northern neighbours of the Romans and Greeks ever since. Celts first came into the consciousness of early modern historians in the 16th and 17th centuries when the works of classical writers like Strabo, Caesar and Livy were becoming widely available. These texts describe how the many barbarian tribes of western and central Europe came into conflict with the Roman and Greek worlds. The writers called these disparate peoples ‘Celts’ or ‘Gauls’ – a tradition that is at least as early as the sixth century BC, when the ethnographer Hecataeus of Miletus wrote of Celts living in the hinterland of the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles). Later, in the fourth century BC, the Greek historian Ephorus of Cymae believed that barbarian Europe was occupied by only two peoples, the Scythians in the east and the Celts in the west, and Strabo adds the gloss that Ephorus considered Celtica to be so large that it included most of Iberia as far as Gades (Cadiz). These early generalisations were accepted by the later Roman authors when they came to write about their growing contacts with the peoples of central and western Europe. In the fifth century BC, quite possibly as a result of an exponential increase in population, the tribes occupying a broad arc including the Loire valley, the Marne region, the Rhineland and Bohemia began to take on a new mobility, thousands of people moving en masse out of their homelands. These were the Celts. One of the migrating hordes thrust southwards through the Alpine passes to the Po Valley, where the disparate tribes settled down in reasonable harmony. Another moved eastwards to the fertile country of Transdanubia (Hungary) and b…

GettyImages-504174466-1-2-0cbeb0e.jpg
width: 1000
height: 679

The genius of the Celts
type: item
date: 2013-12-19T00:00:37.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Celts
description: Graham Robb, author of a new book on the Celtic peoples, argues that it's high time we challenged the Roman characterisation of the Celts as primitive hooligans with terrible table manners
encoded: Every film maker and book illustrator knows how to depict an ancient Celt. A typical Celt is supposed to have been a hairy, mud-smeared hooligan dressed in ragged tartan. In a land of trackless forests beyond the edges of the Roman empire, those ignoble barbarians, inspired by bloodthirsty priests known as druids, conducted a futile campaign of resistance against the superior civilisation from the south. Violently nostalgic and rarely sober, they were easily outclassed by the super-efficient Romans. The popular view of our Celtic ancestors would have been instantly recognisable to a Roman, based as it is on Roman prejudice. The Roman historian Cassius Dio claimed that the Celts of northern Britain lived off roots and bark, and were capable of surviving for days on end in swamps with only their heads above water. Even in the relatively civilised land of Gaul (which covered roughly the same area as France), Homo Celticus was barely human. He blundered into battle with his brawny, blue-eyed wife wearing either animal skins or nothing. At home, he drank undiluted wine and wore trousers instead of a toga. This was in the part of Gaul known as Gallia Bracata (‘Trousered Gaul’). Further north, in Gallia Comata (‘Hairy Gaul’), things were even worse. The natives’ table manners were atrocious. They had been known to fight to the death over the pork roast, and since Celtic aristocrats never shaved their upper lips, according to Diodorus Siculus, “their moustaches become entangled in the food, and when they are drinking, the beverage passes through a kind of a strainer”. Works of art More than 2,000 years after the legions of Julius Caesar slaughtered and enslaved two-thirds of the population of Gaul, we still imagine the barbarian Celts lurking in the primeval squalor of their thatched huts, waiting for the Roman landlords to come and install the plumbing and the central heating. Yet, as archaeologists have known for some time, Celtic civilisation was one of the most advanced…

GettyImages-152206235-7db68a2.jpg
width: 2828
height: 3400