The Giants of Stonehenge and Ancient Britain

The Giants of Stonehenge and Ancient Britain
By Hugh Newman and Jim Vieira
Published in October 2021
404 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

Across Eurasia, but especially in the British isles, there are countless ancient legends about giants.

This book is a compilation of various legends, customs, and traditions about giants from across the British islands. There have also been a number of giant bone finds over the last 500 years, although few of the alleged artifacts survive into the present.

The book is divided by geographical section. Each geographical section is divided by very short subsections that each cover a specific myth. For example, one legend concerns a group of rocks which locals once believed were used as a table by giants.

In the first two chapters, the authors cannot help but wonder to what extent these legends may hold some truth. What I like about this book is that the authors freely speculate, and are unafraid of putting out a wild - and likely wrong - hypothesis. That takes a lot of guts. What I like even more is that for the majority of the book - maybe 350+ pages - they then just collect the evidence and legends, and don’t worry about interpreting it. They then revisit the hypothesis at the end of the book.

I got the physical book. It is very easy to read, because it can just be picked up, flipped to any random section, read for 5 minutes, and put down for a year. It is the perfect book to keep in a library, and never both reading cover to cover. I recommend it highly.

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