Caleb Howells is one of those writers for whom British historical myth is historical reality itself. The “engine” of his theory is a string of identifications - Greek-Trojan-Etruscan/Roman-Celtic - generating a narrative of westwards migrations of entire peoples. Ironically, the pay-off – that there really was a Trojan ruling class in Iron Age Britain – occupies a comparatively small section of the book.
The starting point is the recuperation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s reputation. He really was just a translator of an older, British work, which was much more reliable than the Historia Brittonum. That it was not itself the Historia is well demonstrated by Howells in the first chapter, though he fails to demonstrate Geoffrey’s dependence on multiple sources.
The rest of the book depends on redating the Trojan War. Homer becomes the near-contemporary of the War, as both belong to the Archaic – and a whole variety of other sources are close in time too. Thus, they are taken at face value and Jason, Theseus, Agamemnon, etc. become historical figures. Heracles is identified with Pharoah Osorkon IV. This is rather circular, since the same mythical figures are part of the argument for the dating of the Trojan War. Here, as throughout the book, archaeology is a journeyman player; this is essentially a book based on texts.
The conflict itself is taken to be between Greeks and the whole of Western Anatolia, though the Trojans are themselves culturally Greek. Redating means the Greek Colonisation period becomes both context and explanation.
From here, the narrative can lock into a series of Trojan migrations and especially to Italy, given the evidence of the Etruscan language and Etruria's influence from Greece (because they were, after all, Greeks). Rome itself is identified as essentially Trojan, which means that the co-founder of the Roman Republic can be identified with Geoffrey’s Brutus.
Finally, Howells spurns trade as the explanation for the plentiful evidence of Etruscan influence in Celtic Europe; rather, it is colonised from Italy and a Trojan ruling class established by Brutus. Thousands pour northwards, and then westwards into Britain under his leadership – the La Tène is established, Geoffrey is vindicated.
Geoffrey was taken as largely historical for much of the early modern and the characteristics of much early modern historiography – wide learning and speculative indiscipline – might be said to typify this book. He is not alone in this “Back to the Future” approach, since commitment to a Trojan Britain is shared by others. Wilson and Blackett especially share Howells’s theoretical mechanics, though they use it to connect Iron Age Britons with the Ten Lost Tribes (something Howells has repudiated elsewhere).
If you find this in your Christmas stocking courtesy of a misinformed relative, best to save it for your summer holidays, along with the crime novels and other potboilers you’d otherwise never read.