This volume, the fourteenth in the Staffordshire set of the Victoria County History (VCH) and the fourth to have been written under the partnership of Keele University and Staffordshire County Council, covers parishes in the north-west part of Pirehill Hundred, bordering on Shropshire and Cheshire: Audley, Betley, Keele and Madeley, as well as Trentham south of Newcastle under Lyme. It thus links up with volume viii, published fifty years ago, which dealt with Newcastle and Stoke-on-Trent.

The county editor has written the whole volume, although he acknowledges generous help with maps, plans and architectural descriptions and has drawn on expert and local advice on a variety of topics. The combination of author and editor lends unity to a rather disparate collection of settlements. An introductory chapter sketches the physical character of the area and its historical development. Features common to the various townships were mixed farming, the growth and contraction of coal mining and ironworking, the spread of Methodism and the disappearance in the twentieth century of the landed estates. For the five parish histories the basic VCH template is scrupulously followed, with sections on settlement, manors and estates, economic history, local government, social history and religious history. As might be expected from such an experienced author, the research is thorough and the referencing impeccable, and excellent maps and tables support and supplement the clear and straightforward text. It is possible, with the help of the comprehensive index, to pick up topics, such as the prevalence of psalm-singers in the eighteenth century or the ways in which an influx of the retired can invigorate the social and cultural life of a community, and follow them across parish boundaries. Of particular interest is the amply illustrated treatment of the spread of Methodism in the area and its later decline; only three of Audley's nineteen chapels were still open in 2012. Also stretching across several parishes is the tortuous story of the rise of the Cradock family in the first half of the eighteenth century and the bitter disputes between John Cradock of Betley Court and members of the Salt and Tollet families.

Two twentieth-century developments do not fit easily into the parochial structure. The presence of a great house in Trentham affected the social and economic character of the parish and the history of the Trentham Hall Estate is dealt with separately. The successive rebuilding of the hall by the Leveson-Gower family before its demolition in 1911 is dealt with at length. An account of the household servants who maintained the great house, the home farm and the parkland and gardens during the Leveson-Gower period adds a ‘Downton Abbey’ dimension to this section. Following the sale of the estate, Trentham was transformed by the commercial exploitation of the gardens, which in 2011 attracted more than 400,000 visitors.

The second example of the transformation of an ancient parish and historic landscape is the foundation in 1949 of the first modern ‘campus’ university on the former Sneyd estate in Keele. The VCH structure meant that the history of Keele University was dealt with in volume vi, so the emphasis in this volume is on the impact on the landscape of a residential university. In fitting recognition of the importance of the partnership sustaining the VCH in Staffordshire, the development of the university's estate is charted in meticulous detail, from the conversion of the former army huts into teaching accommodation and the provision of twenty large houses for the first professors in the 1950s to the development of a science park and the expansion of student accommodation in the 1980s and 1990s. The extent of the university's invasion of the historic landscape is shown by the fact that, in 2010, 3,417 students, half the total number, were housed on the campus and provided with facilities for study and entertainment.

Dedicated ‘by gracious privilege’ to Queen Elizabeth ii in celebration of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee and inscribed to the memory of Queen Victoria ‘who graciously gave the History its title’, this volume keeps up the best traditions of the Victoria County History, while managing to encompass recent economic and social changes and the transformation of the old structure of parish and manor, squire and parson.