QUEENS OF THE WILD by Ronald Hutton

This is a fascinating book which sheds an analytic light on various goddesses and mythical figures in the mythology of these islands. Professor Hutton is an ally of pagan beliefs but here he actually does a lot of debunking. However the text is fascinating and what he finds out serves as a corrective to a lot of possibly lazy attitudes people have when it comes to apparent folklore. He looks at four stalwarts of our mythological pantheon: Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Lady of the Night and the Cailleach. He looks at their origins in our culture and – instead of underlining their genesis as pre-Christian figures that survived the Christian takeover – he finds that they actually emerged in later years, after the advent of Christianity.

256pp, 198 x 128 mm, Paperback, 2023, RRP £10.99