High-quality facsimiles, accompanied by scholarly commentaries, are a valuable resource in manuscript studies, particularly since the original work is usually inaccessible but to a few privileged specialists. Such costly limited editions, however, can only be acquired by wealthy individuals or well-funded libraries. This book is an example of recent efforts to communicate more widely the core benefits of the facsimile. Both its text and colour plates are based on the deluxe edition by Faksimile Verlag Luzern, in association with the British Library, of one of the most elaborately illuminated books of hours produced in Paris in the fifteenth century. Eberhard König has been well served by his translators and the text is lucid and informative. Called the ‘Bedford Hours’ after John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford, who ruled France in the name of the English monarchy from 1422 to 1435, and his wife Anne of Burgundy, this book of hours (BL, ms Add. 18850), contains some 1,200 pictures or miniatures. Many of these appear as small roundels in decorative borders of foliate and floral design or as part of an overall architectural framework around a main miniature. Their subjects are either part of an extensive biblical narrative or pictorial renderings of histories and legends associated with the principal miniature on the page. Contrary to earlier opinions, scholars now believe that this book was begun some time before Bedford's marriage to Anne in 1423, and that several artists were sequentially involved in its making. Until recently, too, book illumination was thought to be on the decline in Paris in the early fifteenth century because of the turbulent political times. This perception has dramatically changed, not least through a series of exhibitions held since 2004, which have highlighted the variety and quality of the manuscripts produced in the capital at this time and the hitherto unexplored links between city ateliers and court artists such as the famous Limbourg brothers employed by Jean de Berry. Fresh artistic connections are being defined and additional personalities identified. Konig effectively presents the artistic vitality of the Bedford Hours as part of this context, instancing new subject matter, new types of borders and new stylistic influences from the Rhineland as well as southern France and Italy. He also persuasively affirms that its main miniatures are the work of Haincelin of Hagenau in Alsace, an illuminator who is documented as having worked for the dauphin Louis Guyenne and may also have contributed to Jean de Berry's Très Riches Heures. Alas, books handmade or printed, remain a prey to human error. The splendid pictures and the fine text of this book are seriously disconnected through the absence of any plate or figure numbers; captions confuse the Châteauroux Breviary and the Mazarine Missal; Jean de Berry becomes the son of John the Fearless instead of King John ii, and Charles v, not Charles vi, is named the father of the dauphin Louis. It would be good if such defects were remedied in the next edition of this fine book.