In this companion to his Music and ceremonial at British coronations: from James I to Elizabeth II (Cambridge 2012), Matthias Range has again presented deeply researched and painstaking studies of music and musical performances at a major religious ritual of the British monarchy during its long Anglican history. He now interestingly extends his coverage to the very similar ritual, in the same places of worship, that was accorded to other leading public figures. Here the duke of Albemarle, the duke of Marlborough, Pitt the Elder, Nelson, Wellington, Churchill, Mountbatten and Thatcher take their places alongside sovereigns and other prominent members of the royal family, notably Queen Caroline, Princess Charlotte-Augusta and Diana, Princess of Wales. The result is another authoritative contribution to musical history, deploying many archival discoveries, notably from the records of the College of Arms, to establish as never before the musical details and the ceremonial contexts of these great funeral and memorial services. A wider readership will find careful definitions of the distinctions between royal, state and ceremonial funerals, between ‘public’ and ‘private’ (though actually still public) funerals, and between funerals strictly understood and the twentieth-century practice of ‘pre-internment memorial’ (with burial elsewhere). There are also accounts of changing styles: night-time funerals, lyings-in-state, places of royal burial and the remarkable eighteenth-century ‘concert’ funerals, with performances of music by Handel. In its central features, the ritual was deeply conservative (even more so than coronations), not least because it was determined by the Book of Common Prayer. As Range's remit does not include public reactions nor memorial services in other places of worship and among other religious communities, which for the period since 1800 are included in John Wolffe's Great deaths (Oxford 2000), his section on ‘some wider issues’ is necessarily rather circumscribed. It nevertheless contains interesting observations on the effectiveness of silences and on how these occasions were usually more funerals of a ‘public persona’ than of a corpse. This will be particularly useful as a reference work, providing musical complements to the work of Wolffe, Paul Fritz, Michael Schaich and other historians of royal funerals.