The publishing house of Amberley has become one of Britain's foremost purveyors of popularizing books on local history and archaeology. These two recent volumes on Hadrian's Wall illustrate their well-tried formula – lightweight products of around 160 pages, with easy-to-read texts and beautiful illustrations. Neither is particularly well written (Beckensall's English is often awkward), but each fits a niche in the market.

De la Bédoyère's guidebook is, in fact, the second edition of a book first published by Tempus in 1998. The publisher's blurb calls it ‘an extensively revised and updated version of a classic title’. Whether this is entirely true, and whether the results are completely successful, is open to question. There is certainly a fair amount of rewriting and updating in parts of the text, and several of the first edition's murkier black-and-white illustrations have been replaced by the splendid colour plates which have been added to the new book; but the updated material is not always well integrated. One may ask, for example, whether more could not have been made of the Staffordshire Moorlands pan (discovered in 2003), which has a colour plate and gets a passing mention in the text (p 20) but is never invoked in the discussions of fort names (eg pp 16f, 71, 110) and is totally absent from the index. More seriously, with very few exceptions, the bibliography is innocent of publications that have appeared since 1998. Among the notable absentees are Anthony Birley's Roman Government of Britain (2005), of crucial importance for the epigraphy of Britain's governors, and Tony Wilmott's excellent popular account of the fort at Birdoswald (2001). On p 150 we are told that Paul Holder's publication of a military diploma from Ravenglass is ‘forthcoming’, but reference to the first edition (p 153) reveals that it was already ‘forthcoming’ then. It actually came forth in 1997! A minor detail, but symptomatic of a general lack of rigour in the process of updating.

Such criticisms aside, this little volume is a valuable addition to the many handbooks on Britain's most celebrated Roman monument. After a historical survey, the bulk of the text consists of an east-to-west tour of the Wall and its associated features, divided into convenient ‘bites’ (Wallsend to Chesters, Chesters to Housesteads, Housesteads to Cawfields, Cawfields to Birdoswald, Birdoswald to Bowness-on-Solway). There follow chapters on outpost forts to the north of the frontier (Risingham, High Rochester, Bewcastle and Birrens) and the forts of the hinterland (Corbridge, Vindolanda and South Shields). A section on sources – organized in the form of a series of ‘headline’ sources, literary or epigraphic, each combined with a supplementary paragraph bringing together related material – rounds off the proceedings. Lack of space limits the amount of detail into which the author can go on any given monument or museum, and his choices are to some extent dictated by his personal interests, eg in the history of warfare. But this is all to the good. What we are given is a taster, which is also a useful vade mecum for the visitor, being equipped with full instructions on how to travel to sites, whether by public or by private transport. It will, it is hoped, whet the appetite and lead readers to fuller and more authoritative studies.

Beckensall's book is, by contrast, a pictorial memoir to the Wall – or rather to its central section, from Heddon-on-the-Wall in the east to Pike Hill in the west. It showcases more than 200 of the author's colour photographs, taken over a period of twenty-five years and in all seasons of the year. A first series (A) covers the landscape through which the Wall passes; a second and larger series (B) focuses on the archaeology and its presentation: pre-Roman sites, the Wall itself and its accompanying features (ditch, milecastles, turrets and Vallum), bridges, forts, roads, finds and so on. Brief introductory paragraphs serve to introduce the groups of pictures and link them together. The decision to use separate numbering systems for the two series is annoying: this results in confusion because cross-references in Part B omit the prefix A for photographs in the first series. It is also sometimes unclear from the captions which site is being illustrated: thus illustration B44 is of Corbridge, not Halton Chesters, and B104–108, whose location is not specified, show Vindolanda. But, despite such minor problems, as a visual record of the Wall and its countryside this is an exemplary publication. If de la Bédoyère's guidebook is a serviceable companion for the tourist in the field, Beckensall's picture book can be kept as a souvenir to bring back memories by the fireside.