The minster at Chertsey was founded by Eorcenwald, later bishop of London, in about 670. It came close to destruction at the time of the Danish invasions in the late ninth century, when, according to the house's own memory, preserved in a thirteenth-century cartulary and printed here (pp. 177–9), ninety monks (or more) were slain and the church and monastic buildings were razed. The community was refounded, as a regular Benedictine monastery, in 964. It was worth around £200 in 1086: in Knowles's ‘league table’ in his volume on the monastic order it is in fifteenth place, struggling to stay in the First Division. This volume, a short but none the less very welcome addition to the British Academy Anglo-Saxon Charters series, is the story of the monks' struggle. It prints just sixteen charters, the majority of them royal diplomas, with the other texts including four vernacular writs of Edward the Confessor. Of this total only four are accepted as authentic as they stand. As the texts are dissected and discussed, with the editor's customary skill, what is at first sight a surprising evaluation is offered: ‘the Chertsey forger or forgers had access to a significant quantity of pre-Conquest documentation’ (p. 40). So what happened to this early archive? The answer suggested to that question might seem no less surprising. The loss of material was most likely due not to the ravaging Danes but to the monks themselves, and behind them the demands of a royal chancery that had no time for the niceties of diplomatic. The forgers' title-deeds were, it is suggested, grants of individual properties made to individual laymen; these would not be accepted as evidence of title, and so from them the monks concocted wholesale confirmations in favour of the monastery. This is a satisfying volume. As the series editor, Nicholas Brooks, who sadly did not live to see the volume published, stated in his foreword, it ‘provides a splendid foundation for local scholars to develop their understanding of Surrey History’ (p. v).