This interesting collection is dedicated to a much-loved teacher and an insightful historian, and is organised around the theme of motherhood, so central to a historian of women such as Henrietta Leyser. Motherhood has inspired in the contributors research and reflection on some of the formative relations and situations confronted by medieval people. The volume spans centuries and embraces many regions, yet some themes clearly emerge throughout. Thus, the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, as an inspiration for men and women secular and religious. Conrad Leyser demonstrates the importance of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven for Carolingian dynasts; Brian McGuire shows how helpful Mary was to those men struggling with the demands of the ‘new’ celibacy of the twelfth century; Michael Clanchy considers the power of images depicting Anne teaching Mary to read to inspire domestic religious learning; and Samuel Fanous appreciates Bridget of Sweden's attachment to the Virgin as an inspiration for her new order. Several chapters explore the intimacy forged between mothers and sons who forged ambitious careers in the world: Kate Cooper reflects on Augustine and Monica with sensitivity; and Jinty Nelson explores Dhuoda's use of the Psalms in her attempt to allay those anxieties which no doubt troubled her son William, as he found his place among other young men in court. The agency of married – and widowed – mothers emerges in interesting ways: Sethina Watson shows their work as founders of religious institutions, often hospitals; Jocelyn Wogan-Browne introduces Joan de Mohun (d.1404) as patron of a chronicle in French whose events echoed the dilemmas of her own dynasty; and Mark Whittow traces the life of the Emperor Eirene, as mother-ruler, who could mobilise on occasion a whole state bureaucracy to her cause. The biological reality of motherhood is illuminated in two chapters on medical writing in England, by Monica Green and Tony Hunt. Numerous continental texts were adapted in Anglo-Norman England to reflect gynaecological and obstetrical complaints, like the one addressed in the text edited here by Tony Hunt: ‘Si l'enfes est mort dedens sa mere’ (p. 211). The imaginative scope of laws on family life, like the Ten Commandments considered here by Lesley Smith through medieval interpretations, was not as broad as the applications developed by medieval people. Henry Mayr-Harting considers the affective challenge faced by mothers who became wards of their own sons; Caroline Barron and Claire Martin together show that citizens of London trusted their wives above others as reliable and caring guardians for minor orphans. Like history at its best, the spaces created between the provisions of law and custom on the one hand, and emotional imagination on the other, are explored here, as people coped with complexity, possibility and, very often, desperation too. Motherhood, religion, and society will be of use and interest to all medievalists.