At the turn of the last century, a Victorian polymath turned his gaze north to the crags, legends, and ancient peoples of Wales. S. Baring-Gould was not writing a guidebook. He was writing an archaeology of identity, a book that asked what it means to be Welsh when your blood carries Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon layers. Baring-Gould traces the ancestors who made this wild landscape: the first Iberian settlers, the Celtic tribes who gave Wales its language and spirit, the Romans who built roads and left their marks, and the Anglo-Saxons who pressed in from the east. He shows how Wales became a fortress of difference, shaped by invasion and survival, by tribal loyalty and tribal feuds that both preserved and imperiled the Celtic inheritance. This is Edwardian Wales seen through romantic, learned eyes. It is for the reader who wants more than castles and scenery. It is for those who wonder how history carves itself into a nation's soul.
