This volume consists of papers read at a conference on the Temple Church held at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2008. Its text buoyantly reflects the interest and exhilaration generated by that day, as a building that had been unaccountably undervalued was shown to be of significance throughout its history.

The history of the Temple Church is full of puzzles and problems, some resolved here, others left open: one of the virtues of the book is that the authors are willing to pose questions and suggest solutions but also to admit doubt. So, while this must constitute the standard account of the church for some time to come, future researchers will find plenty to occupy them.

Helen Nicholson's chapter gives an account of the Knights Templar and sets them within medieval London, important both as a crusading order and as keepers of royal and aristocratic treasure. The chapters on the medieval fabric are by Christopher Wilson, who argues that the round nave was built as early as the 1160s, thus re-balancing the arrival in England of what would become Gothic styles; and by Virginia Jansen, with a reflective and thought-provoking study of the hall choir. She discusses many reasons why the hall type might have been chosen, ranging widely over contemporary architecture, and she places the style in the circle of patrons close to Henry iii. A consistent theme in the chapters on the church in the Middle Ages is the relation between Henry iii and his mentor, William Marshal i, Earl of Pembroke. Did Henry initially choose the Temple for burial to be close to William's remains, and was the choir designed as a setting for Henry's future tomb?

Two excellent chapters by David Park – one of the co-editors and on lively form – and Philip Lankester discuss the medieval monuments. Lankester's account of the thirteenth-century military effigies is a model of how such studies should be pursued. He skilfully and judiciously picks his way through the antiquarian minefield that awaits anyone studying medieval tombs, supplying helpful concordances of numbers and identifications; he expounds the difficulties clearly, and his reluctant conclusion that the identification and close dating of individual effigies remains uncertain should not disappoint. On the way, Lankester politely but decisively disposes of numerous factoids (this reviewer, having always suspected that the so-called ‘London group’ of tomb-makers never existed, is pleased to find her suspicions justified), and our understanding is better for that.

The afterlife of the medieval church is discussed in three chapters that consider the adaptation of the building to suit the professional, political and religious preoccupations of the day. The church, being neither diocesan nor parochial, could avoid the influence of everyone except the lawyers who owned it, and even then agreement had to be reached between the Inner and Middle Temple. Robin Griffith-Jones, Master of the Temple and a co-editor, elucidates the manoeuvrings around the Restoration and fall of the Stuarts: Wren's refurbishment of the interior reflected the lawyers’ assertion of the antiquity of common law; but its evocation of the Jerusalem Temple and the primitive church was a riposte to Rome. Here the Middle Ages lingered on in comparisons of the Stuart kings to Solomon and Constantine, an analogy that Edward i would have recognized at once.

Rosemary Sweet's chapter on perceptions of the church in the eighteenth century shows how it exemplified the antiquarian move away from emphasis on memorials towards the beginning of architectural analysis inspired by the early phases of the Gothic Revival. The latter is the centrepiece of William Whyte's account of the restoration and redecoration of the early 1840s. He provides a lucid summary of the ritualistic upheavals that beset the Anglican Church in those years, but also shows how much the programme owed to the revival movement that already existed and why, owing to the Temple Church's effective independence, no faction won. The decorative scheme was lost, largely unmourned, in the bombing raid of 10 May 1941 that destroyed the church itself. Nowadays we tolerate Gothic Revival decoration and, while the restored medieval choir is to be welcomed, we can regret the loss of that scheme. The book ends with Griffith-Jones's elegiac account of what happened on that awful night, a fine tribute to those who tried so hard to save the building.

The editors, Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park, provide useful cross-references between chapters and a wide variety of informative illustrations. It is clear that Griffith-Jones also acted as archival adviser to several contributors, unearthing hitherto unregarded documents and drawing attention to many connections. To adapt Rosemary Sweet's words: ‘the Temple Church [is] now much more visible, both literally and figuratively’ (p 193).