Over the past twenty years, far more words have been devoted to the cultural and historical significance of the chroniclers of the reigns of Kings Henry ii, Richard i and John than were ever written by the chroniclers themselves. The principal histories of this period written in French (Wace, Fantosme, Guernes, Benoît de Saint-Maure) are all now available in good modern editions. By contrast, and with very few exceptions (Richard of Devizes, Robert of Torigny, the Battle Chronicle and now at last Geoffrey of Vigeois), their Latin counterparts remain for the most part approachable only through Rolls Series editions, principally those by Richard Howlett (William of Newburgh) and William Stubbs (Roger of Howden, Ralph of Diss, Gervase of Canterbury and much else besides). Since most of these were published at least 140 years ago and remain untranslated we arrive at a bizarre situation in which undergraduates writing on Plantagenet history must rely on the secondary commentators, with little or no access to the texts on which these modern authorities have so sensibly and abundantly remarked. Into this already crowded field, there now enter two further commentaries, of contrasting style yet surprisingly aligned intent. Staunton's is the more conventional and comprehensive. He begins with an author-by-author survey of the principal ‘English’ historians writing in Latin in the period 1150 to 1217, contibuting a host of individual insights (for example on Gerald of Wales's recycling of Sallust, Gervase of Canterbury's of Orosius, or Howden's of the fifth-century Peter Chrysologus on Herod, here identified with Philip Augustus of France). He then proceeds to a thematic analysis of the chroniclers’ approaches to kingship, fate, rebellion (especially that of 1173–4), the crusades, the Becket dispute and the marginalised, including women and barbarians. Much of this will henceforth be required reading for anyone seeking to make sense either of detail or broader themes. As with Staunton's earlier work on the Becket Lives, there is a depth of insight here and a constant awareness of classical or biblical archetypes. There is also a willingness to dispute dogma: for instance, that the chroniclers were in many cases ‘court’ historians imbued with a common ‘Plantagenet’ ideology, or that they were blind to the sufferings of the victims (especially the Irish victims) of Plantagenet imperialism. Events, he argues, almost invariably trumped ideology, not least because the historians of this period were writing not, as many of their predecessors had done, of a distant past but of contemporary events, various of which were so extraordinary (Becket, the 1173 rebellion, the Third Crusade) that they demanded notice, however poorly they might reflect upon the Plantagenet kings under whose rule they unfolded. To this extent, there was a true revival in the writing of ‘contemporary’ history after 1170, comparable to that which occurred after the Norman Conquest of 1066, or the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. And as with those earlier revivals, it is also worth noting how much of what was written still survives, for the most part in multiple copies. The only exceptions here – Richard fitz Nigel's Tricolumnis, Joseph of Exeter's account of Richard i on crusade and possibly Peter of Blois's De praestigiis fortunae on Henry ii – merely prove the general rule. With writers such as Howden or Ralph of Diss, there was also a new concern for what might be considered ‘historical research’: the collection of letters, charters and administrative sources as a means to ‘prove’ historical truths. Where Anthony Grafton associated the birth of the footnote with the spread of Renaissance humanism, we might more easily detect it in the notational systems pioneered by Ralph of Diss (himself recycling Hugh of Saint-Victor), or the ‘additamenta’ compiled by Roger of Howden and in due course Matthew Paris. Is it at that point that Henry Bainton enters the field, with a study of considerable insight, albeit infuriatingly baroque prose. Bainton writes not as a historian but as a student of ‘cultural memory studies’, here traced to the teachings of various sybils whose Eleutheric banalities should not be allowed to deter readers of his opening twenty pages. Obliged to genuflect before Hayden White, Paul Ricoeur and others of critical theory's high priesthood, why, we might ask, do such priests so often have hyphenated or polysyllabic names? Never plain Jack Spratt: always Ilya-Jacopo Bolshoi-Sprattico. Why do these masterminds never ‘state’ or ‘claim’, but instead ‘invoke’ or ‘adumbrate’? For those who persevere, however, rather like the readers of Balzac obliged to pass over an over-technical disquisition on carpentry or interior decoration before reaching real people, there is much to be savoured. In particular, Bainton is concerned both with the phenomenon of ‘contemporary history’ already signalled by Staunton, and with the ways in which the Plantagenet chroniclers compiled and framed the documents with which their narratives are so liberally scattered. Hovering in the background here, surprisingly unnoticed by either Staunton or Bainton, is not just Bede but the Bible, and in particular the New Testament telling of the Church's story through a combination of lives and letters. Even so, Bainton quite properly draws attention to the way in which the documents themselves do not so much preserve an ‘unvarnished truth’ but contribute to a particular version of truth-telling, selectively excluding other alternatives, much as the royal inspeximus charters first pioneered in this period themselves select a particular viewpoint on the past. Herbert of Bosham's use of the Constitutions of Clarendon, or William fitz Stephen's of various of the Becket letters, as Bainton demonstrates, participate in just such a re-arrangement of what should never be taken for mere ‘facts’. Moreover, these were letters and histories to be not only read but in many cases ‘performed’, with praxis an essential feature of their reception by contemporaries, and in particular by the community of powerful political figures who received their dedications or themselves supplied the chroniclers with materials. Like Staunton, Bainton refuses to identify either Howden or Ralph of Diss as a ‘court’ historian, and nor is he content with the dogmatic assertion that such histories are chiefly significant for revealing proto-bureaucratic state-building, defined by record and literacy rather than charisma. This is all most convincing. There are other assertions here that will command less than complete agreement. For instance that ‘the written word in the High Middle Ages was most politically effective – perhaps only truly effective – when it was used in public’. What, we might ask, of the king's letters close, by which most administration and diplomacy, both day-to-day and extraordinary, were conducted? Or that we should no longer assume that chronicles written in French were essentially oral and performative, whereas Latin was for silent reading or memorialisation. Why not, we might answer, especially when the instances of performance that Bainton cites are almost exclusively French. The claim that Fantosme was writing in French for a literate French-speaking baronage keen themselves to be memorialised rather overlooks the fact that his audience was more likely clerical and, at least in public, pro-royal. Even so, there is much here to stimulate debate, not least over whether what we have come to assume as a specifically ‘Plantagenet’ phenomena was in reality a transnational affair: a refocusing on ‘record sources’ as an essential adjunct to contemporary historical writing, to be found in the Vézelay Chronicle, in Boso, or in Rahewin, just as much as in Howden or Ralph Niger (one of the forgotten heroes of Plantagenet historiography, more or less untouched by either book under review). Above all, these two commentaries should send us back refreshed to the chronicles themselves. Thanks to the late Richard Sharpe, and to the Leverhulme Trust, Gerald of Wales is now in the process of re-edition and translation. How long, one wonders, before Roger of Howden, Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of Diss and a host of others can join him, escaping their brown-shirted confinement in the Rolls Series to find new life in facing-page text and translation amidst the yellower splendour of Oxford Medieval Texts?