The career of Lichfield Gospels, one of the most magnificent surviving manuscripts from the British Isles, may be used to illustrate some of the certainties, and also the insuperable ambiguities, surrounding the circulation of books between England and its Celtic neighbours: Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Brittany. Certain historical events have stimulated the passage of books between England and one or more of its Celtic neighbours such as the accession of Alfred the Great to the throne of Wessex. The majority of Celtic manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England are Brittonic, whether Welsh, Breton or Cornish. The clearest evidence for the circulation of books from England to one of the Celtic regions comes from Brittany. The MacRegol Gospels, also known as the Rushworth Gospels, is an Irish manuscript, which reached Northumbria by the tenth century, where it received Old English glosses.

Impression of Insular manuscript production tends inevitably to concentrate on Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. In the absence of early manuscript evidence from Celtic Britain, there is epigraphic evidence in the form of inscribed stone monuments: those from Wales and Cornwall provide an almost continuous record of letter-forms from the end of the Roman period onwards. The earliest manuscript for which a Welsh origin has been hypothesised is the Lichfield Gospels, a magnificently decorated eighth-century gospel-book. A second gospel-book for which a Welsh origin has been proposed is the Hereford Gospels. There are just three pre-Conquest manuscripts for which a Pictish or Scottish origin has been posited. Paradoxically, one of these is one of the best known Insular manuscripts in the world: the Book of Kells. The other pre-Conquest manuscript that might be considered Scottish is the Book of Deer, a small gospel-book which was at Deer (Aberdeenshire) in the eleventh century.

The earliest illuminated manuscripts that have a definite or possible association with Wales are two gospel-books: Lichfield Gospels and Hereford Gospels. Art-historically the Lichfield Gospels may be placed somewhere between the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. The Hereford Gospels is a rare surviving example of a non-luxury gospel-book which primarily functioned as a lectionary. Each framed page is set out on a fairly grand scale consisting of an ornamental monogram comprising three letters followed by decorative geometric capitals. The form and layout of the decoration in both manuscripts is part of an Insular continuum dating back to the eighth century. There is evidence for the continuing use of Insular illuminated exemplars in Wales as late as the mid thirteenth century. The earliest version of the Welsh law book Llyfr Iorwerth includes some heavily cropped drawings including winged evangelist symbols, in the lower margins of three pages.