Amongst the greater icebergs of unpublished twelfth-century compendia, those by Peter of Cornwall, his Pantheologus (approaching one million words) and his Liber reuelationum (about half that length) float in undisputed magnificence. Yet, as the editors of this volume explain, enough of Peter's Liber has already been chipped away into modern editions that, with a little re-hammering, the entire book can be assembled here as an edition, in part calendar, in part facing-page Latin and English text. The results will horrify those of Germanic sensibility, convinced that only a word by word transcription will do. Those meanwhile who are curious to gain access to a text of great but intermittent interest will offer Sharpe and Easting nothing but thanks and praise. Born in about 1140, Peter was a Cornishman who entered the Augustinian priory of Holy Trinity Adgate. There he joined the broader intellectual milieu of Gilbert Foliot and the schools of St Paul's. Elected prior of Holy Trinity in 1197, and therefore head of house at the time of the rebel-French occupation of London (1215–17), he died in 1221. His Pantheologus seems to date from 1189, his book of marvels from about 1200. Apart from his plundering of earlier writers (Jerome, Bede, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, and a whole lectionary's worth of hagiographers from Sulpicius Severus to Adam of Eynsham via Reginald of Durham, expertly listed here), Peter picked up materials from story-tellers whom he himself had met. All such original material is supplied here both in Latin and in English. As a result, the editors reprint a dozen stories published as long ago as 1962 by Christopher Holdsworth, and their own later editions of Peter's accounts of St Patrick's Purgatory and ‘The vision of Ailsi’ (concerning Peter's grandfather and his uncle, Bernard, scribe to King Henry i). A further twenty-four stories are here published for the first time. There are wonders in plenty, not least amongst this new material, for example the story told by Simon, priest of Borden in Kent, of an excommunicate fraudster dragged from his bed, nightcap and all, and carried by demons across the Thames to Tilbury. There are new insights here into social or religious realities: on funerals (for example i.6.12, p. 200, or i.203, pp. 232–5), on tithe-paying (Prologue 13, p. 90, and i.6.7, p. 192), on the glazing of windows (ii.888, p. 320), the ringing of bells (ii.618, p. 314) or the striking of wooden boards to proclaim the death of monks (i.187, p. 294). Peter's story-telling inhabits the same thought world as that of Walter Map or Gerald of Wales, albeit that, as the editors point out, it carries not a whiff of the ‘new’ theology of the Paris schools. A vision that Peter records of King Henry ii as a pool doomed to drain away (i.8, p. 284) is of more than passing significance, as are the details that he supplies of his uncle Nicholas (i.6.11, p.198), royal scribe, and later canon of Merton. This latter is crucial in proving a connection between Merton and the royal chancery some years before Thomas Becket (future chancellor) was schooled at Merton. The index is rather thin on subjects (nothing on ‘cyrograph’, ‘excommunication’, ‘funerals’, ‘tabula’ etc, despite the prominence afforded to such things in the collection itself). There was a link between Peter and Godfrey de Lucy, dedicatee of book iv of Peter's Pantheologus, through Godfrey's extensive property-holding in Cornwall, which is not explored here. The edition is priced beyond the means of most professors, let alone most students. These quibbles apart, the editors are to be congratulated for serving up so rich a collection of delights.