At the beginning of this important study, Rodwell sets out his stall with the following two statements: ‘The Coronation Chair ranks amongst the most remarkable and precious treasures to have survived from the Middle Ages’; ‘The Coronation Chair is unique amongst surviving royal thrones on account of its having a block of sandstone housed within the seat compartment’ (p xii). He goes on to acknowledge that this is the first account of both the Chair and the Stone and their relationship to each other.

The opening chapters deal with the historiography of the Chair and the Stone, medieval accounts of both their known histories. There follows a detailed description of the Chair, with an associated study of its polychromy by Marie Louise Sauerberg, and a consideration of the Stone. The next chapter is a review of the two items from the later Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. The chair created for Mary ii in 1689 is the subject of a separate chapter, after which Rodwell turns to more recent centuries, including the events of 1996 and the ‘popular influence of the Chair’. Sauerberg provides an account of the conservation of the Chair and, finally, Dean describes the new display and Smith the graffiti on the two chairs (ie the Coronation Chair and that created for Mary ii). Rodwell is thorough in his research and meticulous in the presentation of his evidence; he is also caustic in his denunciation of past imaginative stories about the Chair and the Stone, the latter in particular, and rightly so.

Perhaps the greatest surprise in this book for anyone with a passing knowledge of the Chair and the Stone is the discussion of the actions to the latter after its presentation to Westminster Abbey in 1297. In 1996, on its return to Scotland, this reviewer commissioned a report on the Stone from our Fellow Peter R Hill, as Rodwell acknowledges. In considering the history of the Stone, we assumed that it had not been tampered with once it had reached the abbey and sought to interpret the actions to the Stone on that basis. Our assumption was based upon the thinning of the hoops to which the iron rings were fastened at each end of the Stone, an action which we related to the placing of the Stone in the Chair, which all agree is a tight fit, while the rings were attached to aid the movement of the Stone between the abbey church at Scone and the graveyard as recorded by John of Fordun in the second half of the fourteenth century. Rodwell, however, offers a new history for the Stone.

The compelling evidence for a revision of the putative history of the Stone is the statement by Geoffrey le Baker in 1328/9 that the Stone was fixed to the floor of the abbey. The date is important for there was a move at this time to return the Stone to Scotland. The simplest interpretation is that the abbot was taking steps to make that difficult. On this basis, and on the similarity of the rings to those attached to the coffin of Henry iii, Rodwell offers, for the first time, a firm date for an action to the Stone.

Rodwell goes on to argue that the Stone was cut down in 1297 ready for its new location in the Chair, arguing that the Stone is not large enough to be described as a ‘great stone’ and at its present size ‘would have been a distinctly unimpressive block for outdoor inaugurations’ at Scone (pp 33 and 107); ‘it is inconceivable that an ill-fitting block with battered edges, broken corners and unsightly gaps around it would have been acceptable in a prestigious piece of gilt furniture’ (p 107); the dressing of the arises was undertaken at Westminster ‘to create a rectangular block that was suitable for a chair seat’ (p 107). These are all suppositions. Rodwell supports his case by arguing that while the smoothness of the top of the Stone is ‘consistent with the Stone's being sat upon in the Chair’ (p 174) – and not just by monarchs for, as Rodwell points out, ordinary people were allowed to sit on the Chair, which was only provided with a seat in the eighteenth century – this would not account for the worn surface at the extremities of the Stone and, therefore, ‘the initial wearing of the surface must have occurred when the stone was at Scone, and not confined within the frame of a chair’ (p 174), and before it was cut down to fit into the Chair. In stating this, Rodwell rejects Hill's proposed sequence of actions to the Stone. From his observations, Hill suggested that the smoothing took place after the grooves were cut on the upper surface of the Stone. Rodwell, however, argues the reverse, proposing that the grooves related to the fitting of an inscription plate, an action which was not completed. In short, not all problems are solved, at least to this reviewer's satisfaction.

The only slip this reviewer noted was the firm statement that ‘monarchs in Scotland were inaugurated, but never crowned’ (p 24). This was certainly true up to the time of Robert i, but he spent a considerable sum of money obtaining the necessary dispensation from the pope to ensure that his successor, his son David ii, was crowned with as equal authority as the kings of England.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that this is a sumptuous production, for which the publisher is to be congratulated. It is quite simply a delight to hold the book and admire the illustrations as it is to read Rodwell's incisive prose.