First define “saint” then define “Celtic”: each operation presents difficulties of its own, and when the two terms are combined the difficulties expand almost exponentially. I live in South West Scotland surrounded by towns and villages whose names begin “Kil”, signifying the former site of a hermit's (saint's to many) cell. But the likes of Winning, Maurs, Marnock and others fail to make it to this dictionary, although Bride (Brigit) does have an appropriately full entry. The preface explains: “This is by no means a comprehensive guidebook: there are very many saints whose cult was quite local, since any Christian who was good and had also died might be considered a saint […]”.
We also in most cases know very little if anything about them beyond the commemoration of their names. That is a problem also with many of the saints who are covered here, whose “lives were mostly written centuries later” and which are thus as likely to propagate legend and fiction as they are to record anything beyond basic fact. Elizabeth Rees is a Roman Catholic nun with a Master's degree from Oxford University and so is both knowledgeable and well qualified to sift fact from fiction, likelihood from improbability. The bibliography also notes two previous titles by her on Celtic Saints of Wessex and on Celtic Saints in their Landscape.
What we are given is a very attractive and accessible dictionary of more than a hundred saints from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, West and South West England and Brittany. The entries are ordered alphabetically with cross‐reference where appropriate; there is a thorough index of place names. Some of the saints, of course, are better known than others: Aidan, Columba, David, Ninian, Patrick all take their rightful places, and being parochial again so do Kentigern (with a cross‐reference from Mungo) of Glasgow and Mirrin of Paisley, as far as I know the only saint covered in this book who has given his name to a football team. Among the rest are various names ranging from the unknown (to me at any rate) through the vaguely familiar from place names, to the unexpected: I had not realised that there was a Saint Kew, although she is not in any way connected with the gardens (whose name seems to derive from an Old English word meaning a spur of land or a landing place) but was celebrated at Kewstoke, Somerset. St Deiniol I knew of previously only for the eponymous library, Juliot from references to a place name in Hardy's poetry, and St Mawgan as the name of an airfield.
The aim of this dictionary is not simply to record the lives of the saints but to set them within their geographical and, where possible, ecclesiastical contexts. Each entry is illustrated by a black‐and‐white photograph (or photographs) of places related to the saint, supplemented by a fairly generous centre‐spread of 24 colour photographs. All this helps to expand texts which record what is known, set it into a context and indicate where necessary what might be fact and what is uncorroborated. An introduction outlines the early history of Christianity in the British Isles from Roman times to late antiquity and summarises the main features of its society as relevant to the entries in the body of the text. The history of this period is more complex than often previously imagined and that complexity is confronted in an informed but always accessible text.
This is, as the author wishes it to be, as much a guidebook as a dictionary: it succeeds on both counts. Interested readers are as likely to want to consult a copy in the glove compartment of their car as they are on the shelves of a library: the intending tourist is further aided by maps of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. The book is attractively designed and produced with a large clear typeface, and is generously illustrated, all at a price which puts it within the range of any library as well as of individual purchasers.
