The Druids

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar and Pliny, who described them as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles. They were suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication from ancient Britain. In the early modern era, however, interest in the Druids revived, and later writers reinvented and romanticised their activities. Little is known for certain about their rituals and beliefs, but modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on them.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Barry Cunliffe 3 episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford
• Miranda Aldhouse-Green 2 episodes
  Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
• Justin Champion 11 episodes
  Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London

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Programme ID: b01mqq94

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqq94

Auto-category: 299.16 (Druidism)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The earliest known case of religious persecution in these islands took place 2,000 years ago in the first century AD.