Galois Theory by Ian Stewart is an excellent book indeed! I've got a hard copy lying at home that I am currently reading slowly page by page. I am planning to host book club meetups with this book later this year, perhaps during the winter if I am able to make good progress with this book.

In the meantime, if there is someone here who is interested in reading this type of books together and share updates with each other, I'd like to invite you to the IRC and Matrix channel named #bitwise [1][2] (the IRC and Matrix channels are bridged together, so you could join either one of them). The channel consists of some HN users as well as some users from other channels like ##math, ##physics, #cs, etc. It serves as an online space to share updates about mathematics and computation books you are reading and discuss their content.

[1] https://web.libera.chat/#bitwise

[2] https://app.element.io/#/room/#bitwise:matrix.org

Another introduction from an historical point of view is “Galois Theory for Beginners: A Historical Perspective” by Jörg Bewersdorff

https://bookstore.ams.org/view?ProductCode=STML/95

I can agree with that, this is the primary textbook for the Open University's (excellent) Galois Theory MSc course (https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/modules/m838. I really enjoyed my time on that course.

I was also very interested in reading about the the original papers prior to the various advancements in mathematical thinking and notation that tend to reframe how the theory is taught today. For that I highly recommend Peter Neumanns "The mathematical writings of Evariste Galois" (https://ems.press/books/hem/102) – it has the french side by side with a direct English translation along with notes explaining the context and possible thought process (it also served as a fun way to read some more French whilst I was trying to learn the language).