Gypsies: An English History

Gypsies, Egyptians, Romanies, and—more recently—Travellers. Who are this marginal and mysterious people who first arrived in England in early Tudor times? Are tales of their distant origins on the Indian subcontinent true, or just another of the many myths and stories that have accreted around them over time? In fact, can they even be regarded as a single people or ethnicity at all, or are they little more than a useful concept?

Gypsies have frequently been vilified, and not much less frequ...