III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)

Abstract

C.P. Lewis British histories There is little this year that takes the whole of the British Isles as its field, but Clare Downham, Viking kings of Britain and Ireland: the dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014 (Dunedin Academic P., £25), although concerned with just one Scandinavian dynasty based in what came to be the backwater of the Isle of Man, provides a detailed political narrative and analysis across the whole of the British Isles. She draws on numismatic, archaeological, and place-name evidence besides the written sources, and in many ways replaces Alfred Smyth's Scandinavian York and Dublin (1979) as the first point of reference for her topic. Unlike Smyth, she avoids relying on the highly problematic and much later evidence of the Icelandic sagas. A byproduct of her interest in political connections across the Irish Sea is ‘St Bega: myth, maiden, or bracelet? An Insular cult and its origins' (J. of Med. Hist., 33). England: sources and their interpretation Two further exemplary editions of narrative sources, edited to the very highest standards of the Oxford Medieval Texts (OMT) series lead the way. John Hudson (ed. and trans.), Historia ecclesie abbendonensis: the history of the church of Abingdon, volume 1 (Clarendon P., £100) completes his two-volume edition of a source which is not just about Abingdon abbey but important for Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history generally (volume 2 appeared in 2007). A complex text is here presented with great clarity, an excellent facing-page translation, and copious scholarly commentary. M. Winterbottom (ed. and trans.), William of Malmesbury: Gesta pontificum anglorum, The history of the English bishops, I: text and translation (Clarendon P., £110) is the first of two volumes which will set on a wholly new footing historians' use of Malmesbury's enthralling compendium of history and story-telling about the English bishops and their dioceses. We await a companion volume including an introduction and commentary. OMT has been exceptionally productive in recent years, making many of the narrative sources for the Norman Conquest period available (in libraries, given the price) in much more reliable editions than previously. They are much used as set sources in advanced undergraduate work, but need a lot of explanation, so a warm welcome can be given to Eric Knibbs, ‘How to use modern critical editions of medieval Latin texts’ (Hist. Compass, 5/6). On the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Stephen Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the politics of mid-eleventh-century England’ (E.H.R., 122) is important for showing how the Chronicle developed in the last years of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as for making a strong case that the different manuscripts embody the politics of the period. There has long been a need for a better edition and translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history of early Britain, and that want has now been filled by Michael D. Reeve (ed.) and Neil Wright (trans.), Geoffrey of Monmouth, The history of the kings of Britain: an edition and translation of the De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britannie) (Boydell P., £50). The Latin text is based on a much more secure knowledge of its complicated manuscript transmission (some 220 manuscripts having survived), and the translation is elegant and readable. This now becomes the standard edition, and should open up more confident use of an intriguing text. David Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Boydell P., £50) builds on the idea powerfully (and controversially) advanced in his Domesday: the inquest and the book (2000): that Domesday Book was not the intended outcome of the Domesday Inquest. He sees a shift in the concerns of the people who devised and carried through what became Domesday Book, from diversified concerns with geld (i.e. taxation) and service in the Inquest, to lordship in the Book. His view that Domesday Book described only the land which was assessed to service, not all land, if correct, changes fundamentally how Domesday Book can be mined for information about late eleventh-century England. But even if that central idea is not accepted (and some reviewers clearly do not), this book has very useful accounts of the historiography of Domesday scholarship and the contents of Domesday Book. Roffe provides a brief taster for the book in ‘Decoding Domesday’ (Hist. Today, June 2007). Still on Domesday Book, I am sorry to say that the preface of Colin Flight, The survey of the whole of England: studies of the documentation resulting from the survey conducted in 1086 (British Archaeological Reports, British Ser. 405, 2006, £30) was enough to put me off reading any more. It is symptomatic of the author's approach that he just cannot bring himself to call it what everyone else calls it. His evidently painstaking analysis of the text may well have produced some gems, but it is doubtful whether they will ever be absorbed by the mainstream scholarship which he plainly distrusts. The two definitive series of editions of charters are also continuing full-steam: two instalments of Anglo-Saxon Charters in Julia Crick (ed.), Charters of St Albans (OUP, £45) and S. E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of Bath and Wells (OUP, £50), and one of English Episcopal Acta in Mary Cheney, David Smith, Christopher Brooke, and Philippa M. Hoskin (eds), Worcester, 1062–1185 (OUP, £45). There are also new ecclesiastical charters in B. R. Kemp, ‘Archidiaconal and vice-archidiaconal acta: additions and corrections’ (Hist. Research, 80), which prints sixteen documents discovered since the author's Canterbury & York Soc. edition of 2001. Emilie Amt and Stephen D. Church (eds), Dialogus de scaccario (The dialogue of the exchequer) and Constitutio domus regis (The disposition of the royal household) (Clarendon P., £85) replaces the existing editions (published 1902 and 1950) of two texts of the early twelfth century which have been central to our understanding of the growth of bureaucratic government in England. The Bayeux Tapestry continues to attract attention and reinterpretation, often by scholars with expertise in disciplines such as art history. Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury eyes’, in Simon Keynes and Alfred P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Four Courts P., 2006, £55) has the interesting idea of looking at some of the conventional artistic motifs of the Canterbury school of manuscript illumination which appear embroidered in the margins of the Tapestry. She draws out their resonances for Canterbury artists, and so is able to make some new suggestions about what they meant when used in the Tapestry. Janet Burton (ed.), The foundation history of the abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx (Borthwick Institute, 2006, £15) is the first modern edition of an interesting account of the origins of two Savignac (soon Cistercian) houses in Yorkshire. England: surveys Interest this year centres on royal biography. Several important contributions are made in Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (eds), Henry II: new interpretations (Boydell P., £55), including those of Nicholas Vincent on Henry's court (drawing on the forthcoming edition of his acta), Ian Short on vernacular court culture, Martin Aurell on courtly interest in King Arthur, Anne Duggan on the Becket controversy, Paul Brand on developments in law, Jean Dunbabin and John Gillingham on different aspects of relations with France, Edmund King on events in the dying days of King Stephen's reign, Nick Barratt on royal revenues, Martin Allen on the coinage, and Matthew Strickland on Henry's eldest son, the Young King. Jean Flori's French biography of Richard the Lionheart, king and knight now appears in a translation by Jean Birrell (Edinburgh U.P., 2006, £75, pbk £25), providing a chronological account and a treatment of Richard's image in relation to medieval chivalry. England: government, law, and society Stephen Baxter, The earls of Mercia: lordship and power in late Anglo-Saxon England (OUP, £60) is one of the most interesting of this year's books on any topic, and has had enthusiastic reviews from all sides. It provides a detailed analysis of the acquisition and exercise of power by the earls of Mercia in the eleventh century, and makes a major contribution to our understanding of politics and aristocratic society. Baxter differs from David Roffe (see above, Sources) on important points in the interpretation of Domesday Book, and offers cogent accounts of the nature of the earldoms, landed wealth, lordship over smaller landowners, and the strengths and limitations of royal authority. Also contributing to understanding political culture is Charles Insley, ‘Assemblies and charters in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in P. S. Barnwell and Marco Mostert (eds), Political assemblies in the earlier Middle Ages (Brepols, 2003, £50). Insley shows that certain features of tenth-century royal charters, such as claims about rule and apologies for misdeeds, conveyed political messages. Robin Fleming, ‘Acquiring, flaunting and destroying silk in late Anglo-Saxon England’ (Early Med. Europe, 15) belongs in this section, too, since she shows that silk had an ideological and politicized meaning for those who acquired and wore it. But this is a remarkably rich and wide-ranging article which also addresses economic history in a wholly new way, and is based on a deep understanding of how much historians of the period can learn from using archaeological evidence and thinking about material culture. Some of the practicalities of royal government in the twelfth century are illuminated in S. D. Church, ‘Some aspects of the royal itinerary in the twelfth century’ (13th-Century England, 11); Mark Hagger, ‘A Pipe Roll for 25 Henry I’ (E.H.R., 122) [a short extract discovered in a fourteenth-century manuscript proves that the Pipe Rolls began earlier than the earliest surviving one, of 31 Henry I]; and Nicholas Karn, ‘Nigel, bishop of Ely, and the restoration of the exchequer after the “anarchy” of King Stephen's reign’ (Hist. Research, 80) [the chronology is better understood by examining the careers of the royal officials involved]. George Garnett, Conquered England: kingship, succession, and tenure, 1066–1166 (OUP, £65) is a learned, original, and provocative account of the rupture of 1066 in English history and its consequences over the following century. Garnett sees the homage done personally to the new Norman king as a wholly new element in the English state and society, and one which had profound and disturbing consequences for political history. Early reaction to the book in reviews suggests that a hornet's nest has been stirred up by the way in which Garnett's thesis undercuts prevailing ideas about continuity across the Conquest. Narrower aspects of Anglo-Saxon law are variously the subjects of Andrew Rabin, ‘Old English forespeca and the role of the advocate in Anglo-Saxon law’ (Med. Studs, 69); Scott Thompson Smith, ‘Of kings and cattle thieves: the rhetorical work of the Fonthill Letter’ (J. of English and Germanic Philology, 106) [a tenth-century property dispute where local and national concerns intersected]; and Michael Fordham, ‘Peacekeeping and order on the Anglo-Welsh frontier in the early tenth century’ (Midland Hist., 32) [the ‘Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte’ seen as representative of the Old English state's involvement in dispute settlement along its borders]. England: family and gender Stacy S. Klein, Ruling women: queenship and gender in Anglo-Saxon literature (Notre Dame U.P., 2006, £19.95) adds much to our knowledge of queenship in the late Anglo-Saxon period, because for the first time it gives a systematic and expert account of how queens were represented in the literature of the period. An important article by Pauline Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and women: gendering conquest in eleventh-century England’, in Keynes and Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons (see above, Sources) draws attention to the prominence of women in a crucial annal in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. She sees the representation of gender there as a means by which the chronicler was able to comment on political events. A useful collection of Stafford's previously published essays, Gender, family and the legitimation of power: England from the ninth to early twelfth century (Ashgate Variorum, 2006, £60) is prefaced by a new one which draws out the main themes and conclusions of her work. Kirsten A. Fenton, ‘Ideas and ideals of masculinity in William of Malmesbury’ (Women's Hist. R., 16) shows that Malmesbury thought that restraint was the key to ideal male behaviour. England: identities Despite all the attention paid to Englishness in recent years, there is still space for a fresh (but too brief) look at the name of the country: George T. Beech, ‘The naming of England’ (Hist. Today, Oct. 2007) shows that ‘Engla land’ (the name of a country) replaced ‘Angelcynn’ (the name of a people) over the period 1014–35. The implications need following up. The identity of the Welsh within England is the concern of two articles in N. J. Higham (ed.), Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell P., £50) (which otherwise has a much earlier chronological focus): C. P. Lewis, ‘Welsh territories and Welsh identities in late Anglo-Saxon England’ and David Thornton, ‘Some Welshmen in Domesday Book and beyond: aspects of Anglo-Welsh relations in the eleventh century’. Regional identities, illuminated before 1066 by Baxter's book on Mercia (see above, Government), are covered for the late twelfth century by Anne Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). Food for thought on language use and language choice in post-Conquest England is provided by Kathryn A. Lowe, ‘Post-Conquest bilingual composition in memoranda from Bury St Edmunds’ (R. of English Studs, 59): different types of document were written in Latin and English, but the implications could have been further explored. Anglo-Saxon attitudes to death and the dead perhaps best come here as an aspect of identities. Christina Lee, Feasting the dead: food and drink in Anglo-Saxon burial rituals (Boydell P., £45) tries to make sense both of the early archaeological evidence and of the later written sources. Her argument is that practices and traditions of mortuary feasting first evident from archaeology in the pagan period continued to be important right through into the tenth and eleventh centuries. J. L. Buckberry and D. M. Hadley, ‘An Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire’ (Oxford J. of Archaeology, 26) is an archaeological report full of technicalities, but also usefully sums up what we now know about execution cemeteries and the attitudes to the dead that they illustrate. Beliefs about the world and the identity of humanity within it are also touched on in a rather dense technical study of language and texts by Alaric Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: matters of belief, health, gender and identity (Boydell P., £45), and in Britt Mize, ‘The representation of the mind as an enclosure in Old English poetry’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006). Martin K. Foys, ‘An unfinished mappa mundi from late-eleventh-century Worcester’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006) argues for a hitherto unrecognized tradition of Anglo-Saxon maps of the world, with implications for their own place in it. England: settlement, landscape, and the economy Interest in the origins of medieval common-field systems has had something of a revival in recent years. A thoughtful and interesting contribution is made from a local perspective in Sue Oosthuizen, Landscapes decoded: the origins and development of Cambridgeshire's medieval fields (Hertfordshire U.P., 2006, £14.99). Careful study leads her to suggest that this particular system originated in the period of Mercian dominance before the Vikings, so running contrary to the orthodox idea that common-field systems dated from after 900. Another local study of interest (from a very different part of the country) is Peter Herring, ‘Medieval fields at Brown Willy, Bodmin Moor’, in Sam Turner (ed.), Medieval Devon and Cornwall: shaping an ancient countryside (Windgather P., 2006, £19.99), which identifies four phases of settlement at a marginal moorland hamlet over the three hundred years before 1275. Two clearly explained Somerset examples of the fragmentation of large land-units into parish-sized territories during the central Middle Ages could be read by historians interested in other regions as models of development: F. R. Thorn, ‘Shapwick, Domesday Book and the “Polden estate”’ (Somerset Archaeology and Natural Hist., 151) and Mick Aston and Michael Costen, ‘An early medieval secular and ecclesiastical estate: the origins of the parish of Winscombe in north Somerset’ (ibid.). Thorn's in particular is an excellent demonstration of just how much can be squeezed out of a close analysis of Domesday Book. The important contribution which test-pitting is making to understanding the development of villages is well explained in Carenza Lewis, ‘New avenues for the investigation of currently occupied medieval rural settlement: preliminary observations from the Higher Education Field Academy’ (Med. Archaeology, 51). From this year's issue onwards, Med. Archaeology has added to the usual mass of very brief reports of archaeological fieldwork (often enough, frankly, of little intrinsic interest) a new section of extended ‘fieldwork highlights', reporting the most significant work at greater length. Among other studies of settlement and topography at a very local level I would single out Paul Everson and David Stocker, ‘Little Sturton rediscovered, part 1: the grange of Kirkstead abbey’ (Lincolnshire Hist. and Archaeology, 40, 2005) and David Bourne, ‘Flaxton: the layout of the original planned settlement’ (Yorkshire Archaeological J., 78, 2006). For a stimulating report on continuing research, on ring-fenced Anglo-Saxon farms, see Ros Faith, ‘Worthys and enclosures’ (Med. Settlement Research Group Annual Report, 21, 2006). Yet another castellologist offers an overview of the state of castle studies: Sarah Speight, ‘British castle studies in the late 20th and 21st centuries’ (Hist. Compass, 2, 2004). Daniel Étienne, ‘Les châteaux de Guillaume fils Osbern dans le sud des marches galloises’ (Annales de Normandie, 56, 2006) provides a much needed conspectus, responding to ideas about some of the castles individually put forward by other scholars. There are new empirical data for individual castles (from excavations as long ago as the 1960s and 1970s) in David Austin, Acts of perception: a study of Barnard Castle in Teesdale (2 vols, Architectural and Archaeological Soc. of Durham and Northumberland, £65) and Andrew Saunders, Excavations at Launceston castle, Cornwall (Soc. for Med. Archaeology, 2006, £45). Probably of wider interest for its integration of fieldwork, documentary sources, and what can be gleaned from courtly literature of the late thirteenth century is P. S. Barnwell, ‘The power of Peak castle: cultural contexts and changing perceptions’ (J. of the British Archaeological Association, 160). On the economy, the period 950–1250 is brilliantly illuminated from a completely new perspective in John Blair (ed.), Waterways and canal-building in medieval England (OUP, £55). The collection is avowedly preliminary, and some of the articles focus on later periods (inevitably, given the nature of the evidence), but the whole collection, which brings together historians, archaeologists, and place-name specialists, adds up to a coherent and exciting account. It is of great interest for historians of trade, regional difference, and even political authority. Overdue for mention here is James Campbell, ‘Domesday herrings’, in Christopher Harper-Bill, Carole Rawcliffe, and Richard G. Wilson (eds), East Anglia's history: studies in honour of Norman Scarfe (Boydell P., 2002, £50). The modest title conceals an important contribution to economic history, which shows that the dense population of eleventh-century East Anglia was sustained on very small land holdings by a vast herring fishery, which itself required industrial-scale salt production (to preserve the fish) and the ‘open-cast peat mines’ which formed the Broads (to make the salt). England: the church and religion Belief systems rather wider than religion lie at the heart of an engrossing book, C. S. Watkins, History and the supernatural in medieval England (CUP, £55). Using the copious historical writings of the long twelfth century (from 1066 to after 1300), Watkins explores ‘Thinking about the supernatural’, ‘Inventing pagans’, ‘Prayers, spells and saints’, ‘Special powers and magical arts’, ‘Imagining the dead’, and ‘Thinking with the supernatural’. Throughout he is concerned with the boundary between beliefs which were acceptable in a Christian context and those which were not. Astonishingly, Mary Frances Giandrea, Episcopal culture in late Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell P., £60) is the first book specifically about bishops and their functions in England in the period 900–1066. The author begins by showing how wrong we have been to follow the condemnatory judgements of their detractors in the post-Conquest, post-Gregorian church of the earlier twelfth century. Separate chapters then treat the roles of bishops variously as royal servants, heads of cathedrals, supervisors of pastoral care within their dioceses, and landowners, and finally their function in local society. The book synthesizes a great deal of scholarship and provides a distinctive and convincing account of the physical and mental worlds of Anglo-Saxon bishops. The archbishops of Canterbury's cultural, religious, and financial exchanges are illuminated by Steven Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders in the late tenth century’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006), which edits, translates, and discusses a group of four letters sent to archbishops by Flemish abbots. Michael Staunton, Thomas Becket and his biographers (Boydell P., 2006, £45) is a masterly account of how the story of the archbishop's extraordinary life and shocking death was shaped and presented in his ten almost contemporary biographies. Christopher Norton, St William of York (York Medieval P., 2006, £45) adds to the small corpus of modern biographies of individual twelfth-century bishops (he was archbishop of York 1141–7 and 1153–4), and is especially adept and interesting in the chapters on architectural and artistic patronage. An important aspect of monastic life is scrutinized in Julie Kerr, Monastic hospitality: the Benedictines in England, c. 1070–c. 1250 (Boydell P., £55). This is a rounded and interesting study, which covers the practical details of hospitality, how it was organized and paid for, and its spiritual aspects. See also the same author's ‘ “Welcome the coming and speed the parting guest”: hospitality in twelfth-century England’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). Emilia Jamroziak, Rievaulx abbey and its social context, 1132–1300: memory, locality, and networks (Brepols, 2005, €60) is a rich local study which places the abbey in its setting of patrons, benefactors, and neighbours. Judith A. Frost, The foundation of Nostell priory, 1109–1153 (Borthwick Paper 111) is pamphlet length but also a substantial scholarly account. An important reassessment of the lives of English nuns in the eleventh century is provided by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, ‘Goscelin and the consecration of Eve’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006). Michael D. C. Drout, How tradition works: a meme-based cultural poetics of the Anglo-Saxon tenth century (Arizona Center for Med. and Renaissance Studs, 2006, £38) will be hard going for many historians, but its central premise is fascinating: that the Benedictine Reform's emphasis on the memorization and repetition of liturgical formulae spilled over into secular texts from the same period, including wills and wisdom literature. Those interested in saints' cults and church dedications in the central Middle Ages (the period when most medieval English parish churches were established) will be able to get a great deal of stimulus from Graham Jones, Saints in the Landscape (Tempus, £16.99) despite its lack of explicit interest in chronological development. The year has seen a huge amount of work on individual cults, leading off with three substantial monographs. Virginia Blanton, Signs of devotion: the cult of St Æthelthryth in medieval England, 695–1615 (Pennsylvania State U.P., £44.50) provides a full account of the cult of one of the more important female English saints, the patroness of Ely abbey (a bishopric from the twelfth century). Susan E. Wilson, The life and after-life of St John of Beverley: the evolution of the cult of an Anglo-Saxon saint (Ashgate, 2006, £55) likewise covers a long period but has much to say about the central Middle Ages. Christine Walsh, The cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in early medieval Europe (Ashgate, £55) includes a chapter on the spread of the cult to England, evidently in the eleventh century. Other publications on saints' cults include Heather Edwards, ‘The saint of Middleham and Giggleswick’ (Yorkshire Archaeological J., 76, 2004) [St Alchhild; with a useful appendix of all known Anglo-Saxon female saints]; John R. Black, ‘Tradition and transformation in the cult of St. Guthlac in early medieval England’ (Heroic Age, 10) [Guthlac evolving from an ascetic solitary to the defender of a wealthy monastery]; Tom Licence, ‘The Life and Miracles of Godric of Throckenholt’ (Analecta Bollandiana, 124, 2006) [edition and translation of a rediscovered text from the early twelfth century]; and John M. McCulloh, ‘Unofficial elements in the cult of St. William of Norwich’ (Hagiographica, 13, 2006) [showing how an official cult of a boy-saint supposed to be the victim of ritual murder by Jews interacted with unofficial interest]. Anglo-Saxon devotion to the cross (their word was ‘rood’) lies at the heart of a big book which straddles conventional disciplinary boundaries in a challenging way. Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the rood: liturgical images and the Old English poems of the Dream of the rood tradition (British Library, 2005, £50) considers the pre-Viking Northumbrian stone crosses at Ruthwell and Bewcastle, the tenth-century poem Dream of the rood preserved in the Vercelli Book of Old English poetry, and the eleventh-century treasure known as the Brussels reliquary cross. Ó Carragáin's scholarship is high-powered but also controversial, and the book should be read alongside reviews, including that by Daniel Paul O'Donnell in Heroic Age, 9 (Oct. 2006). For one of those crosses, Patrick W. Conner, ‘The Ruthwell monument runic poem in a tenth-century context’ (R. of English Studs, 59) argues that the runic poem was added in the later tenth or even the eleventh century, an important revision. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (eds), Christina of Markyate: a twelfth-century holy woman (Routledge, 2005, £55, pbk £18.99) is a richly interdisciplinary collection which covers all aspects of her life. Tom Licence, ‘Evidence of recluses in eleventh-century England’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 36) shows that ‘reclusion’ was a phenomenon of the mid eleventh century, and influenced by developments on the Continent. Most of the chapters about England in Martin Carver (ed.), The cross goes north: processes of conversion in northern Europe, AD 300–1300 (York Medieval P., 2003; pbk 2005, £25) deal with an earlier period, but it is worth looking out for Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, ‘Three ages of conversion at Kirkdale, North Yorkshire’ (which includes a new discussion of the eleventh-century sundial) and Sam Turner, ‘Making a Christian landscape: early medieval Cornwall’ (for the chronology of local church foundation to 1070). The Old English preaching texts preserved as homilies have been much discussed by literary scholars, but even so there are a great many new insights in Aaron J. Kleist (ed.), The Old English homily: precedent, practice, and appropriation (Brepols, €90). The cultural significance of twelfth-century interest in pre-Conquest homilies has still not been fully appreciated by historians: there is further food for thought on that subject here in the articles by Mary Richards, Aidan Conti, and Mary Swan. England: architecture and art Peter Draper, The formation of English Gothic: architecture and identity (Yale U.P., $80) is a very fine book indeed, which integrates close study of individual buildings with wider considerations. For the careful exposition of an individual monastic church and how its architectural form related to its local patrons see Jackie Hall, ‘Croxden abbey church: architecture, burial and patronage’ (J. of the British Archaeological Association, 160). The conference transactions of the British Archaeological Association always have much of interest. Mike McCarthy and David Weston (eds), Carlisle and Cumbria: Roman and medieval architecture, art and archaeology (Maney, 2004, £48, pbk £32) includes Jill A. Franklin's review of the architecture of the Augustinian canons as context for Carlisle cathedral, Richard Plant on the Romanesque cathedral church, Malcolm Thurlby on Romanesque more widely in the diocese, John A. A. Goodall on the great tower of Carlisle castle, and Henry Summerson's overview of the development of the city in the Middle Ages. Tim Ayers and Tim Tatton-Brown (eds), Medieval art, architecture and archaeology at Rochester (Maney, 2006, £65, pbk £24.50) has Nicholas Brooks's masterly summary of the history of Rochester to 1066, Tim Tatton-Brown on topography, Richard Plant on the Norman cathedral, Jane Geddes on its remarkable door, Richard Halsey on the twelfth-century nave, Peter Draper on the Gothic east end, and Jeremy Ashbee and John Goodall on Rochester castle. The latest issue of the Association's