Prof. Ronald Hutton

In three books, he studied the development of the ritual year in Britain, exploring many myths about the antiquity of festivals and practices. His book Triumph of the moon: A History of modern Pagan Witchcraft examined the development of wicker and the context of which it formed. He questioned many assumptions about it’s development and argued that many of the claimed connections to long-standing hidden pagan traditions are questionable at best. However, he also argued for its importance's as a genuine new religious movement. His latest work is on the origin of modern Druidry and how the modern druid movement emerged in history, which revises the old historical accounts sympathetically, explaining why modern druidry was so important to its founders, and is still popular today. Part of this material was given as the first lecture of the mount Heamus Award series.


Publications


  1. • Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1989

  2. • The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, 1993

  3. • The Discovery Of the Modern Goddess” in Nature Religion Today, (Joanne Pearson, Richard H. Roberts, Geofferey Samuel, eds) 1998

  4. • The British Republic 1649-1660, 2000

  5. • The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700, 2001

  6. • The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, 1996

  7. • The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, 2001

  8. • Shamuns: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination, 2001 

  9. • Witches, Druids and King Arthur, 2003

  10. • Debates in Stuart History, 2004

  11. • The Druids: A History, 2007

Professor of history at the University of Bristol and is an occasional commentator on British Television and radio on the history of paganism in the british Isles. Hutton attended Ilford County High School in the 1960’s and 1970’s, going on to win a Scholarship to study history at Pembroke College, Cambridge.


Hutton’s area of specialization include the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially on the Reformation, Civil Wars, Restorations and Charles II. He had also written on ancient and medieval paganism, and on witchcraft beliefs and shamanism.