This is the first comprehensive linguistic study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets.
The stones are a major source for the history of the Celtic-speakers of post-Roman Britain and for the development and divergence of their languages, yet the dating of the 370 inscriptions remains uncertain. Now, through a new study of the phonological development of the Brittonic and Irish branches of Celtic, Patrick Sims-Williams places the chronology of the inscriptions on a surer footing.

The book will be of interest to archaeologists, historians and art historians, as well as to philologists interested in the methods and problems of historical phonology and onomastics.