Book Launch | The Celtic World: A History

Join us for the launch of The Celtic World: A History by John Waddell.

Distinguished historian and Celtic scholar Edel Bhreathnach will launch the book in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, Galway city at 6.00pm on Thursday 19 February 2026.

RSVP to info@fourcourtspress.ie

At the dawn of history the Celts occupied a vast swathe of Europe from Ireland in the west to lands south of the Black Sea in Asia Minor. The study of this Celtic past has often been a disputed and debated territory and for centuries the true story of these Celtic-speakers of old was obscured by fanciful origin myths. Their origins and subsequent history were slowly revealed when linguistic studies and archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth century began to expose a rich and complex narrative that is still being clarified today. A series of dramatic finds in France and Germany in particular have brought these ancient peoples to scholarly and popular attention. This was a prehistoric world that offered an intricate picture of connectivity and diversity across much of Europe. These were people who have bequeathed us a remarkable archaeological heritage, an astonishing art style, several living languages, and, in Irish and Welsh, the most substantial body of early written texts in a non-Latin tongue in western Europe.

This book is a historical exploration of how our understanding of the ancient Celts and the concept of a European-wide world inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples developed over time.

John Waddell is a former Professor of Archaeology in the University of Galway. His books include Archaeology and Celtic myth (2014) and Pagan Ireland: ritual and belief in another world (2023).