This book takes as its start and end point the renewed interest in St George as patron of England which has appeared since the creation of devolved government in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s. St George enjoys a great deal of cultural currency and there are on-going attempts to have his feast day recognised as an English holiday. Despite this there has been relatively little sustained academic study of the origins and development of his cult in relation to his status as England's patron. Jonathan Good's engaging and detailed study traces the origins of the cult, and of the different identities which George came to take on for those who venerated him. Good opens with a nuanced case for the existence of nationalism in the Middle Ages, thus aligning himself with other scholars who have highlighted the fallacy of approaches which hold both nations and national identity to be a product of the modern era. Within this methodological framework the bulk of the book constitutes an elucidation of the reasons why George was appropriated as England's patron in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, drawing on a wealth of documentary, literary and visual sources in the process. Included as an appendix are useful lists of records of the cult in the form of church dedications, visual representations and gilds. The book explores both royal and more popular manifestations of devotion to George in the late medieval period, and thus makes a welcome addition to our understanding of the varied dynamics and functions of saints' cults among those of differing social status. Good discusses at length the important observation that ‘good’ kings (such as Edward iii and Henry v) venerated St George, but that ‘bad’ kings (such as Edward ii and Richard ii) did not, and thus adds an important dimension to our understanding of the ways in which contemporaries perceived and judged the performance of kingship. Good argues that this phenomenon ‘established a positive connection between the saint and the nation’, rendering George an appropriate patron for the English, despite the fact that he was not a native saint. Good's chapter on the popular cult contends that this royally inspired construction of George as patron was not just an elite phenomenon but was taken up by the English more widely, and in ways that could also involve the expression of local, civic pride, as witness the many recorded incidents of St George's Day processions in towns, complete with dragon. Good returns to the present day in his final chapter, which considers uses and representations of George from the sixteenth-century onwards. Such a topic is worthy of its own full length study, and the analysis here is, of necessity, rather cursory in places. But it does offer suggestions of particularly significant moments of interest in George, such as the self-consciously medievalist use of him as part of commemorations of the First World War in the 1920s and '30s, which may inspire others to explore further. Overall the study is both enjoyable and informative, and its approach and scope ensures that it would be of great interest and utility not solely to medievalists, but to those working on the political dimensions of devotion and questions of nationhood in other periods too.