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A review by julis
Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton
informative
slow-paced
4.0
I’ve owned this book for a couple years now and put off reading it because I thought it was going to be one of those neopagan nonsense texts about how there was a community of Druids that weren’t converted to Christianity etc.
It was not.
It was an impeccably researched, heavy on the critical analysis look at a) every source we have on the Druids (1 chapter, limited) and b) everything (in English) we’ve made up about the Druids to make up for a (many chapters, 95% of the book). Some parts dragged, and I felt like it went too in depth in some of the short lived 1700s groups and didn’t put nearly enough focus on modern groups, but a surprisingly fascinating read overall.
It was not.
It was an impeccably researched, heavy on the critical analysis look at a) every source we have on the Druids (1 chapter, limited) and b) everything (in English) we’ve made up about the Druids to make up for a (many chapters, 95% of the book). Some parts dragged, and I felt like it went too in depth in some of the short lived 1700s groups and didn’t put nearly enough focus on modern groups, but a surprisingly fascinating read overall.