ABSTRACT
The idea of a race, nation or ethnic group called Celts in Ancient Britain and Ireland is indeed a modern invention. It is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century 'reification' of a people that never existed, a factoid assembled from fragments of evidence drawn from a wide range of societies across space and time. 'The Celts', then, must be rejected as an ethnic label for the populations of the islands during the Iron Age, the Roman period or indeed medieval times, not least in the direct sense that they did not use this name for themselves. The concept of British identity, although apparently so different from that of the Celts, has some interesting similarities with it. It, too, was a new creation from pre-existing kingdoms. It, too, was created in response to perceived outside threats. To many, Britishness seems to mean less than older national or regional identities, as devolution and the resurgence of Scottish and Welsh nationalism demonstrate.
