Chivalry is an elusive subject, and its treatment by historians has often been problematic. In his preface, Nigel Saul acknowledges Maurice Keen's seminal work on the subject thirty years ago, and declares that his aim is to build on those foundations. His approach in For Honour and Fame is at once narrower and in many ways more rewarding. As the work of a distinguished historian whose starting point was the study of the provincial gentry and their culture, and who has given us the definitive study of Richard ii and his court as well as a magisterial survey of medieval English church monuments and their social and historical implications, its emphasis is firmly on the realities of knightly life.

Instead of studying the vague abstractions of the chivalric ethos, Saul sets out to look at the ways in which chivalry interacts with English medieval society. The major problem for the English writer is that chivalry and knighthood, covered by the one word chevalerie in French, are separate topics. Saul takes the French approach, and moves between the practical and theoretical aspects of the knight's world without making the rather artificial distinction between the two. He describes the Norman invasion of 1066 as the ‘chivalric conquest’, establishing firmly that knighthood and fighting on horseback are at the heart of the chivalric world. He begins by tracing the history of English chivalry down to 1399 and then examines the major themes of chivalry, before returning to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the splendour and decay of chivalry in that period. He offers two chapters on chivalric literature towards the beginning and end of his survey and these, while eminently readable and sound, are perhaps the least exciting part of the book.

The ‘honour and fame’ of his title is not just that of the individual. In Froissart's world of heralds and heroes, it is the prowess of the knight, whether in warfare or tournament, which matters. Saul shows us the broader view, the concern for the reputation of lineage and family, as in the heraldic displays that were crucial to a family's reputation such as those on the tomb of Reginald Cobham at Lingfield or the brass of Hugh Hastings at Elsing. He uses the testimony of the knights themselves in the court of chivalry, that strange legal forum for determining who had the right to bear particular arms which relied on the collective memory of English knighthood, and which in the process recorded vivid images of the knights themselves. And he shows how genealogy was so integral to the standing of the family that it might be recorded at the beginning of a cartulary, elaborated in a historical roll, or become the chief concern of surviving widows or daughters, as in the case of the ‘Beauchamp pageant’ commemorating the deeds of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Pageant it may be, filled with tournaments, crusades and warfare, yet it also records the earl's role as ambassador and as tutor to Henry vi. The visual element of this commemoration is reflected in the illustrations, many of them unfamiliar even though relatively few in number, given the range of the subject.

It is the strength of Saul's text that it never tries to isolate fame and honour from the wider context, showing how a knightly reputation was enhanced rather than diminished by their work as diplomats and administrators. His wide knowledge of the knight's world is reflected in the wonderful details that illustrate his argument. And he has a keen eye for topics which all too often escape the historian who is only concerned with a brief period of time, such as the practice of invoking the prayers of the English clergy and people in support of military campaigns or Richard i's innovative use of newsletters to keep his subjects informed of his triumphs.

In such a wide-ranging book, there must be occasional points that are debatable, such as his assessment that the battle of Crécy marks the beginning of the decline of the chivalric values in warfare. Military necessity and the circumstances of the encounter always took priority over the niceties of chivalry, and the slaughter at Crécy was due less to the unfurling of standards which declared that no quarter would be given than to the massive tactical errors and lack of command on the part of the French, and to the small size of the English army. This is shown by the contrast at the battle of Poitiers ten years later, where, in a more orderly conflict, large numbers of prisoners were taken.

A brief review cannot really do justice to the richness of this book, and to its readability. It cuts across the biographies and military history which all too often dominate historical writing on the Middle Ages aimed at a wider public, and is at the same time a book which few scholars will read without learning something new.