Book review: Blood and Mistletoe

Blood and Mistletoe is not so much a history of the Druids as a history of "what people have subsequently thought, imagined and claimed about them", said Noel Malcolm in the Daily Telegraph. Ronald Hutton argues that the handful of ancient texts which directly describe the Druids - including Julius Caesar's famous descriptions of mass human sacrifices and Diodorus Siculus's assertion that Druids predicted the future by "stabbing a man in the chest and seeing how he wriggled in his death throes" - cannot be relied upon as historical evidence.

Indeed, the very dearth of information about the Druids made the subject "an almost empty canvas, on to which people could paint whatever historical fantasies they preferred". The Elizabethan physician John Caius, for instance, declared that Druids founded Cambridge University.

Two centuries later, the Welsh poet Edward Williams changed his name to "Iolo Morganwg" and claimed that he was the last true bard and Druid. As evidence, he cited some medieval texts which he himself had edited. This book is a "refreshingly even-handed" view of the various "loonies" who were drawn to the Druid myth.

This is an "ably researched" study, said Peter Ackroyd in the Times. Hutton describes how Bath's architect, John Wood, designed Bath Circus as "an example of Druidic geometry". Then there's George Watson Reid, a Scottish gentleman who in 1912 arrived at Stonehenge wearing white robes and a tall white turban, and announced himself as "Ayu Subhadra, a messenger from Tibet".

There's only one thing missing, said David Barrett in the Independent: an account of today's colourful Druid groups. Besides that, Blood and Mistletoe is a "tour de force: surely the definitive work on our perception of the Druids".

Blood and Mistletoe, by Ronald Hutton, 491pp (Yale, £30) The Week Bookshop £27 (incl p&p) ·