This book is really an undergraduate essay that has swollen into a monograph. One's estimate of it begins to be formed, unfortunately, with the appearance of no fewer than five typos on the first page of text (p. ix). This situation continues throughout, mainly in the footnotes and Latin quotations, and is aggravated by the unprofessional presentation of the abbreviations, footnotes and bibliography: for example Mansi's Concilia said to be printed (rather than reprinted) at Graz in 1960; all the titles in the abbreviations repeated (with the same typos) in the bibliography; primary sources arranged haphazardly by name of the medieval author or modern editor; authors cited sometimes with initials sometimes with full first name; full bibliographical details repeatedly cited for items in the footnotes. How did all this survive the advice attributed in the acknowledgements to an eminent Anglo-Saxonist, a reader for the press (or more than one?: ‘I am indebted to the anonymous Reader for … their … comments’) and an editorial board of six? As to the substantive discussion, William of Malmesbury offers a rich mine for historians of gender, and it is doubtless legitimate to approach the subject, as here, from the viewpoint of Gender Studies. But what does Fenton mean by ‘gender’? We are told that the book ‘is a gendered reading of the works of an individual author’ (cf. p. 25, ‘the gendered significance of pursuing a study of William and his works’), that ‘gender’ is an ‘analytical tool’ and that William has a ‘gendered attitude’ or used ‘gendered language’ in relation to a wide range of phenomena. Clearly ‘gender/gendered’ cannot mean the same thing in every one of these contexts, but whatever it means, the mere labelling of William's views as ‘gendered’ does not in itself provide an explanation for them. At a different level, William's text is mined at best selectively, inexcusable given that his major works are now available in editions with facing translations, elaborate indices and commentaries. The commentator on the Oxford Gesta regum (whom this reviewer is accustomed to address by the Personal Pronoun Perpendicular) took the trouble to aggregate and analyse William's ninety-one references to women. Fenton did not use (or for that matter criticise) this leg-up; hence no mention of one of William's most admired women, Æthelflæd of Mercia. There is so little comparison between William and other contemporary English historians that it is impossible to know whether his ‘gendered’ attitudes were unique, odd or thoroughly characteristic. Little or no distinction is made between ‘facts’ that William could hardly avoid recording (such as political marriages) and his overt interpretation, which might indeed convey individual gender bias. The chapters on violence and sexual behaviour contain useful observations, but these are undercut by naiveties such as (p. 62) ‘He writes about marriage only in relation to the laity’, or (p. 72) ‘Edgar is presented as being out-of-control sexually, which is clearly a bad thing’ (cheerfully reminiscent of Sellars & Yeatman).