The Celts

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Professor Alice Roberts is one of our finest popular science broadcasters and this book is the companion to the series on the Celts she made with historian Neil Oliver for the BBC. The book manages to go into more depth on the subjects covered in that series and Roberts does a fine job of marshalling the evidence and voicing her own doubts about accepted conclusions.

a b Roberts, Alice; McLysaght, Aoife (2018). "Who am I?". The Royal Institution. Archived from the original on 10 January 2021 . Retrieved 19 February 2021. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone. Intuitively, I would say this book is suitable for beginners just as for those of you who've already had some experience with the topic of the book. (I must mention at this point that I am not a scholar of Archeology or the Celts themselves even. I guess I would describe myself as an enthusiast who has had the pleasure to sit with a group of Irish students for a semester at UCD, Dublin where I acquired some decent knowledge prior to reading this book.) The author describes what we know about the way the Celts lived and how they fought in times of war. She describes their jewellery and their chariots. The fine workmanship on gold jewellery which has been discovered both in Britain and Europe shows that they had a high level of craftsmanship and were not the barbarians that Roman writers generally depict.

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Come the subsequent wave of Anglo-Saxon invasions (or settlement), near contemporary historical records do refer to the Angles and Saxons having to fight indigenous (let's be controversial and call them Celtic) tribes ... but described by these historians when translated into modern English as 'Britons'! In this 3x60’ series for BBC Two, anthropologist professor Alice Roberts and archaeologist Neil Oliver go in search of the Celts - one of the world's most mysterious ancient civilisations. Neil and Alice explore the origins and beliefs of the Celts, their highly sophisticated tribal culture and enduring influence on vast areas of the ancient world. Gallagher, Paul (30 August 2014). "Alice Roberts: She's done pretty well, for a boffin without a beard". The Independent on Sunday. Archived from the original on 31 August 2014 . Retrieved 16 October 2017. Roberts lives with her husband, David Stevens, and two children, a daughter born in 2010 and a son born in 2013. [74] She met her husband in Cardiff in 1995 when she was a medical student and he was an archaeology student. [75] [5] They married in 2009. [76] Aired as a three-part series in September 2020, Roberts co-presented the BBC's The Big Dig focusing on the finds at St. James's Park in London and Park Street in Birmingham.

Maybe the specialists are in the next episode. In the meantime, I recommend you get down to the new Celts exhibition at the British Museum – there until 31st January 2016. Well researched and with a strong narrative thread – and presenting the latest thinking on the Celts – this exhibition really does bring Iron Age Europe to life. I can't help thinking that if the undeniable presenting dream team of Oliver and Roberts had only teamed up with their equivalents in the world of Iron Age curators – Julia Farley and Fraser Hunter – then this would have been a very different review.After graduating, Roberts worked as a junior doctor with the National Health Service in South Wales for 18 months. In 1998 she left clinical medicine and worked as an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Bristol, becoming a lecturer there in 1999. [5] [7] [12] Roberts wrote and presented a BBC Two series on anatomy and health entitled Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young, which was broadcast from January 2007. [33] She presented a five-part series on human evolution and early human migrations for that channel entitled The Incredible Human Journey, beginning on 10 May 2009. [34] In September 2009, she co-presented (with Mark Hamilton) A Necessary Evil?, a one-hour documentary about the Burke and Hare murders. [35] In January 2021 Roberts presented a 10-part narrative history series about the human body entitled Bodies on BBC Radio 4. [29] Television career [ edit ]

Roberts was born in Bristol in 1973, [5] the daughter of an aeronautical engineer and an English and arts teacher. [6] She grew up in the Bristol suburb of Westbury-on-Trym where she attended The Red Maids' School. [5] [7] [8] In December 1988, she won the BBC1 Blue Peter Young Artists competition, appearing with her picture and the presenters on the front cover of the 10 December 1988 edition of the Radio Times. [9] It loses a star for its clear bias for a theory that remains controversial. And it loses a star for the depth of the reporting. Instead of in-depth discussion we get paragraphs of questions and dismissals without argument ("I'm not convinced."). The worst comes at the end. The epilogue [SPOILER ALERT] includes a quote that Celtic is still spoken but Latin is not, which (her friend) declares "a triumph of sorts". This is an absurd statement given French, Italian, Spanish, Romania, and Portuguese are all descended from Latin in the same way Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic are descended from 4th Century Celtic languages. It should not have been included at all.Alex Campbell (17 May 2013). "Uncovering the secrets of North America's Ice Age giants". BBC . Retrieved 27 May 2013. On 12 February 2021, Roberts presented a one-hour BBC Two documentary, Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed, [56] about Mike Parker Pearson's five-year-long quest that filled in a 400-year historical gap in the provenance of the bluestones of Stonehenge and Waun Mawn. [57] [58] [59] Some chapters and facts get a little repetitive and the editors could have done a better job here, the cautiousness could still have been better combined with a more punchy delivery and that would have been a better read - but, that was never going to happen, remember we're with Alice and friends down at the snug bar discussing Celts. We end up being wiser for it and not lecture-room battered, so that's ok, thanks Alice.