Over 40 years ago, the Keeper of Greek coins at France’s Cabinet des Médailles in Paris (equivalent to the British Museum collection), wrote about his first encounter with the ‘Celtic’ coins of Gaul 14 years earlier: ‘I stopped in amazement in front of a display where I encountered Gallic coins for the first time. How could it be possible for a people considered so backward to produce such revolutionary and innovative art?’ (author’s translation from Lancelot Lengyel, Le Secret des Celtes (1969), p. 33).
More than a century earlier, Sir John Evans, considered the founder of ancient British numismatics, traced ancient British ‘Celtic’ coins back through Gallo-Belgic types to their original prototype and concluded that ‘the whole of gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations, more or less rude and degenerate, of the Macedonian Philippus’ (John Evans, (1864), p. 24). Sir John’s view of British ‘Celtic’ coins as poor imitations of classical coins persisted until
