Peter Tremayne
Author of The Druids
About the Author
Peter Tremayne is the fiction writing pseudonym of the Celtic scholar and author Peter Berresford Ellis, who was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England on March 10, 1943. Even though he received a BA and an MA in Celtic Studies, he decided to become a journalist and worked at numerous weekly show more newspapers throughout England and Ireland. In 1968, he published is first book, Wales: A Nation Again, about the Welsh struggle for political independence. He became a full-time writer in 1975 and has published over 90 books under his own name and the pseudonyms Peter Tremayne and Peter MacAlan. One of his best known works under his real name is The Cornish Language and its Literature, which is considered the definitive history of the language. In 1988, he received an Irish Post Award in recognition of his services to Irish historical studies. Under the pseudonym Peter Tremayne, he writes the Sister Fidelma Mystery series. He received the French Prix Historia for the best historical mystery novel of 2010 for Le Concile des Maudits (The Council of the Cursed). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: The International Sister Fidelma Society
Series
Works by Peter Tremayne
Hell or Connaught: The Cromwellian Colonization of Ireland, 1652-1660 (1975) — some editions — 57 copies, 1 review
Celtic Whodunnits 7 copies
Une Lune de Sang - Poche 3 copies
The Siren of Sennen Cove 2 copies
The Foxes of Fascoum 2 copies
Beeston Castle, Cheshire a report on the excavations 1968-85 by Laurence Keen and Peter Hough (1993) 2 copies
The Stuart Sapphire 2 copies
Murder in the Air 1 copy
The Temptations of Merlin 1 copy
Terreur rampante 1 copy
The Revenge of Dracula 1 copy
Valley of Shadow (6) 1 copy
Fireball 1 copy
Yet More Celtic Whodunnits 1 copy
The Banshee 1 copy
Methought You Saw A Serpent 1 copy
Marbh Bheo [short story] 1 copy
The Oath of the Saxon 1 copy
The Singing Stone 1 copy
For the Blood is the Life 1 copy
Son of Dracula 1 copy
Dracula's Chair 1 copy
Associated Works
The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published (2009) — Contributor — 193 copies, 5 reviews
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (2006) — Contributor — 151 copies, 4 reviews
The Camelot Chronicles: Heroic Adventures from the Age of Legend (1992) — Contributor — 126 copies, 1 review
The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) — Contributor — 121 copies, 1 review
My Sherlock Holmes: Untold Stories of the Great Detective (2003) — Contributor — 94 copies, 1 review
The Chronicles of the Holy Grail: The Ultimate Quest from the Age of Arthurian Literature (1996) — Contributor — 77 copies, 1 review
Royal Whodunnits: Tales of Right Royal Murder and Mystery (1999) — Contributor — 71 copies, 1 review
The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: First Annual Collection (2000) — Contributor — 60 copies, 1 review
In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus (2016) — Contributor — 52 copies, 1 review
The Mammoth Book of Hearts of Oak: Classic and New Stories from the Age of Fighting Sail (2001) — Contributor — 35 copies, 1 review
The Deadly Bride and 21 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories: Volume II (2006) — Contributor — 26 copies
The Collected Classical Stories and Classic Who Dunnits/boxed Set (2 volume set) (1996) — Contributor — 25 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Ellis, Peter Berresford
- Other names
- MacAlan, Peter (pseudonym)
Tremayne, Peter (pseudonym) - Birthdate
- 1943-03-10
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK
Cornwall, England, UK
Dublin, Ireland
Brighton, Sussex, England, UK - Education
- North East London Polytechnic (BA ∙ 1989)
University of East London (MA ∙ 1993) - Occupations
- reporter
editor
writer
historian
biographer
novelist - Organizations
- Gorseth Kernow
- Awards and honors
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1996
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, 1998
Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of East London, 2006
Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd, 1987
Honorary Life President of the Scottish 1820 Society, 1989
Honorary Life Member of the Irish Literary Society, 2002 - Agent
- Euan Thorneycroft
Members
Reviews
Blood In Eden by Peter Tremayne
The year is AD 664. The King of Northumbria has asked the services of a wise counsel to decide the people's religious future. Among the priests,.elders, and scholars from Ireland and Rome is Sister Fidelma of Kildare. Trained as an advocate of the courts, she was expecting to rule on issues of law. Instead, she must investigate the death of the Abess Etain, a leading Celtic speaker, her throat slashed. With the counsel in an uproar and civil war threatening, the king asks Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf to learn the truth.… (more)
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
The Druids serves as a casual introduction to the history of the ancient Druids and their influence which stretched throughout the centuries. This book can be read as a casual introduction and as nothing more than that, due to continual structural flaws (for example, the total omission of footnotes and clear citations). I struggled through the irritated (and to use a word a friend recently reminded me of) curmudgeonly historiographical introduction, but after pressing on I found that the rest of the book was tolerably engaging and readable. The Druids contains enough information to get your feet wet and provides many hints at subjects for further study. There are more than a few leaps of logic and reason that make me uncomfortable with taking most anything mentioned in this book without a grain of salt, I certainly won't be citing it is an authority on any of the subjects that it addresses. If you're interested in the history of the Druids, I would recommend looking at Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe rather than this book. Hutton provides a much more solid viewpoint. While the scope of The Druids and Blood and Mistletoe are not entirely analogous, Hutton is considerably more credible, logical and thorough.
Ellis is not a historian. Plain and simple. There are plenty of excellent popular historians who make up for their 'lack' of a degree with attention to detail, logic, and close adherence to source material. Ellis lacks the rigor, good writing style, or credibility to make any of his more controversial points stick. The cherry on top for me is the complete lack of footnotes in this book. He writes:
For example, Ellis proclaims:
I came across several interesting subjects that I am excited to investigate further, and I am grateful that Ellis mentioned them. However, I won't directly quote The Druids to make anything but the most mundane points.… (more)
The Druids serves as a casual introduction to the history of the ancient Druids and their influence which stretched throughout the centuries. This book can be read as a casual introduction and as nothing more than that, due to continual structural flaws (for example, the total omission of footnotes and clear citations). I struggled through the irritated (and to use a word a friend recently reminded me of) curmudgeonly historiographical introduction, but after pressing on I found that the rest of the book was tolerably engaging and readable. The Druids contains enough information to get your feet wet and provides many hints at subjects for further study. There are more than a few leaps of logic and reason that make me uncomfortable with taking most anything mentioned in this book without a grain of salt, I certainly won't be citing it is an authority on any of the subjects that it addresses. If you're interested in the history of the Druids, I would recommend looking at Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe rather than this book. Hutton provides a much more solid viewpoint. While the scope of The Druids and Blood and Mistletoe are not entirely analogous, Hutton is considerably more credible, logical and thorough.
'There are no final truths. The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions'.The Druids opens with this auspicious quote from French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, seeming to indicate an inquisitiveness into the subject, an open mind, and a deep familiarity with the matter at hand. Sadly, Ellis largely ignores his introductory quote, rarely pausing to question and demonstrate solid analysis.
Ellis is not a historian. Plain and simple. There are plenty of excellent popular historians who make up for their 'lack' of a degree with attention to detail, logic, and close adherence to source material. Ellis lacks the rigor, good writing style, or credibility to make any of his more controversial points stick. The cherry on top for me is the complete lack of footnotes in this book. He writes:
"Because my purpose is to present a book for the general reader, I have, as in some of my previous works, dispensed with copious footnotes. Where sources obviously need crediting, I have made this clear within the body of the text".Of all the things that make academic history a slog, the historiographic argument, the absurdly clunky prose, attention to minutiae, perhaps the least obnoxious is footnotes and proper citations. There are a ton of things that were stated in this book that I would love to follow up on, but cannot because proper footnotes and citations weren't used.
For example, Ellis proclaims:
"From the Old Irish texts one gathers that the Druids were concerned, above all things, with Truth and preached 'An Fhirinne in aghaidh an tSaoil (The Truth against the world)".Pray tell, what 'Old Irish' texts? Where can I find this information? There is literally no way that I can verify this. An internet search for the saying in its Irish form returns nothing of value, and a search for its English translation all leads to Iolo Morganwg (who wrote the saying in Welsh, not Irish). So I am left to wonder what the source of the Irish saying is, and if it is legitimate.
I came across several interesting subjects that I am excited to investigate further, and I am grateful that Ellis mentioned them. However, I won't directly quote The Druids to make anything but the most mundane points.… (more)
Lists
Celtic Fiction (1)
Monastic life (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 157
- Also by
- 78
- Members
- 13,905
- Popularity
- #1,658
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 282
- ISBNs
- 705
- Languages
- 13
- Favorited
- 29
