Title: Blood and Mistletoe – The History of the Druids in Britain
Author: Professor Ronald Hutton
Reviewed: Mark Rosher. 2026
I wonder how many of our membership have read this book. I’ve just read it through, page by page, for the second time. I conclude, again, that with one caveat it remains THE most essential book for any Druid’s reading list.
That caveat? Simple. You have to accept that the Professor of History at Bristol University and perhaps the strongest living authority on paganism in Britain, who has written a serious academic tome full of source detail, and who is known throughout the British pagan world and beyond for his knowledge, has told as true a story of the evolution of Druidry as can be told.
There are so very many books on Druidry: how to be Druid, how to embrace Druid thinking and become “a Druid”. This isn’t such a book, but it is a book on how Druids came to be, in all the ages they came to be in. Each time, a little different, each time reflecting the times in which they lived, each time facing challenges and creating opportunities. A Druid for our times, every time.
It’s not a dry book, although Hutton does not set out to be entertaining or humorous. For that, get to see him speak live. But it is entirely readable as a single work, and searchable for research purposes. Through reading this book, and deeply, for a second time, I have recognised that my Druidry (for a given value of Druidry™) is to me what all those earlier Druidrys were to those earlier adherents.
I cannot recommend this book hard enough. I will certainly read it at least a third time, and it holds a central space in my Druid Library. I bought the book; it’s not a review copy. But even if I’d been sent it for free, this is the review I would write.