Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe

Barry Cunliffe’s overview of our island’s first inhabitants encompasses a lifetime’s experience as an archaeologist.

Now Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, he has excavated in Fishbourne, Benebury, Hengistbury Head, as well as in Brittany and Spain.

This is an accessible, vivid account of how our ancestors probably lived, in which he weighs up evidence about the origins of the British and Irish peoples from 10,000 BC to the eve of the Norman Conquest. Starting with prehistoric flints and moving through burial chambers such as Wayland Smithy in Oxfordshire and the great stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, he also looks at how we have interpreted this evidence to suit our own preconceptions.

In the days before carbon-dating, people embroidered prehistoric finds with Bible stories and classical myths. The Roman view (Caesar said we all dyed our bodies blue and kept our hair long to make ourselves more warlike) was tempered by experience, while Geoffrey of Monmouth, who created King Arthur, and the Victorians who romanticised the Druids, were driven by different urges.

He emphasises the importance of immigration — the disruption caused by the Viking settlers and the way these early peoples travelled great distances by sea, bringing to life the interactions between people of different origins. He ends with a run-through of recent immigration, saying: “The islanders have always been a mongrel race and we are the stronger for it.”

Barry Cunliffe will be at Blackwell’s on Thursday, November 1.