This is the first survey of religious beliefs in the British Isles from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity, one of the least familiar periods in Britain's history. Ronald Hutton draws upon a wealth of new data, much of it archaeological, that has transformed interpretation over the past decade. Giving more or less equal weight to all periods, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, he examines a fascinating range of evidence for Celtic and Romano-British paganism, from burial sites, cairns, megaliths and causeways, to carvings, figurines, jewellery, weapons, votive objects, literary texts and folklore.

Ronald Hutton was educated at Cambridge and then at Oxford, where he held a fellowship at Magdalen College. In 1981, he moved to the University of Bristol, where he is now Reader in British History. He is a historian of wide interests ranging from political affairs and popular culture to topics covering the whole of the British Isles. This is his fifth book.