This collection of essays is dedicated to Professor Richard Bailey, who spent his academic career at Newcastle University, serving there also as pro-vice-chancellor, an administrative experience that he put to good use in retirement serving on Heritage Lottery Fund committees. He will be best known to Fellows for his work on Anglo-Saxon sculpture, though as the list of his publications at the end of the book shows, his net was cast widely, over churches, metal artefacts, manuscripts and people. The essays reflect this eclecticism, and their authorship includes many distinguished scholars whose names indicate the high regard in which Professor Bailey is held.

The essays in the first part of the book consider aspects of sculpture: Cramp, Coatsworth and Edwards on groups, George Henderson on Pictish – with a robust defence of the interpretation of the Hilton of Cadboll stone as a hunting scene with a female rider, not Christ, at the top. He suggests a link with the Mercian coins showing Queen Cynethrith. Isobel Henderson also strengthens arguments that close links between Mercia and Pictland are to be seen in sculptural construction and carving. Stancliffe makes a powerful case for a new interpretation of the Ruthwell cross, that its design was by Lindisfarne implemented by sculptors from Wearmouth-Jarrow; for its themes to confront British heretical beliefs would have demanded considerable exegetical skills in a public audience, however.

In the second part of the book, Ó Carragáin begins a move away from sculpture by comparing the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses with a wooden panel at Santa Sabina. Hawkes also considers a wooden artefact, the coffin of St Cuthbert, noting the cross incised in its base and suggesting that the overall symbolism is of the saint rising to join the company of heaven represented by the figures in the other panels. Karkov explains the Trinity painting in the Harley Psalter as an image of contemplation, not judgement. Webster adds further strength to the Hendersons’ argument for Pictish/Mercian links by elucidating the Beckley sword pommel, a relatively recent discovery, as is an incomplete gold brooch from Norfolk, which Graham-Campbell shows to be Scandinavian in design if not origin. This viking theme is pursued by Hines in discussing another new find: a spindle-whorl from Lincolnshire, with a runic inscription seemingly invoking the aid of two Scandinavian gods and a saga-figure, perhaps indicating deeply held notions of protection by the ‘old world’ despite official Christianity in the early eleventh century. Inscriptions are also the topic of Gittos’s paper on slightly later lead crosses in graves at Bury St Edmunds, not known from other Benedictine houses, but chiming with recorded practice at Westminster.

Papers in part three revert to questions about the vikings: O’Sullivan on what the word means (I follow Abels in using a lower case ‘v’ to show that they were neither a race nor a nation), and Paterson on distinctive Cumbrian burials. Everson and Stocker suggest that memorial crosses in Chester commemorated merchants – they do not call them ‘vikings’, though such aliens presumably had Scandinavian contact – who sailed up-river past the Roman walls to a beach-market (as had happened previously in London). Watts reviews what might yet be found at Whitby, and Morris goes much further north to inscriptions in runes and ogham at Brough of Birsay. Parsons reminds us that the honorand co-authored a book advocating dowsing as an archaeological technique, and presents the remarkably precise outline of what purports to be a large apsidal chapel in the churchyard at Brixworth. He is followed by a more orthodox survey by Cambridge of Durham Cathedral.

The final part turns more to texts: O’Brien on Bede’s narrative of King Edwin’s dream, arguing that it is much more carefully composed than it seems on first reading; Owen-Crocker writes on the values expressed in Beowulf; Doyle on a miracle story; Allason-Jones and Heslop on an estate charter; Frankis on Anglo-Saxon language contacts; Moisl on Austrasian/Irish contacts and exiles; and Whaley on Northumbrian lesser place-names, weaving the pleasures of walking with delight in ‘verbal legacy’.

This is a book that will give instruction and food for thought to many readers, and one hopes pleasure to its honorand, whose teaching, collaboration and encouragement are acknowledged by many of the authors.