This thirty-third volume in the British Academy's English Episcopal Acta series exemplifies the high quality and collaboration characteristic of its scholarship. It is based on Mary Cheney's work, and it is testament to her that no new texts of Bishop Roger have come to light since her biography and calendar of his acta, Bishop Roger of Worcester, 1164–1179 (Oxford 1980). Her late husband inspired and founded the series, its first and current general editors also contribute here, as does Christopher Brooke. Like the other volumes in the series, it is a fundamental resource not only for the history of the diocese of Worcester, but also for the English Church of this period. Like them too, the texts are edited to extremely high standards (although something is missing from the editors' rubric to no. 54, and cross references need to be inserted into n. 68 of the introduction). 154 full texts are printed here; those of Bishop Roger already printed by Cheney are not, and scholars will need her work alongside them for his episcopate. As at other monastic cathedrals, the cathedral priory provides most of the texts through the first third of the twelfth-century, but thereafter, in a time of increasing business and developing administrative practices, it does not seem to have dominated episcopal activity as much as it could sometimes do elsewhere. While in general the subject matter of the acta develops along similar lines to other bishoprics, a number are very singular. Worcester cathedral priory was one of the earliest institutions to forge episcopal acta, and some of the texts here are, with some Canterbury and Durham acta, amongst the most difficult in the entire series. The discussion, drawing on the expertise of Julia Barrow (also a series editor), is exemplary and replaces that in the edition of the priory's charters. Other early forgeries originate at Gloucester and Warwick. Noteworthy genuine texts are Wulfstan's series of confraternity agreements with other monasteries (nos 5–7); Samson's letter to Archbishop Anselm balancing his loyalties to his superior, the king, and his son, the archbishop of York with whom Anselm was in dispute (no. 16); Theulf's grant for the welfare of the royal family (no. 34), and a witness list suggesting a gathering of county society at the dedication of a church (no. 33); Simon's problematic treaty with a new secular power, the earl of Worcester, from the civil war of King Stephen's reign (no. 116); and the prominence of the new king Henry ii in ecclesiastical affairs in the 1150s (no. 133). It is Theulf, Simon, and to a lesser extent John of Pagham, about whom most can be learned from this volume, because they are less prominent in other source material and have been much less studied than the well known Wulfstan, Roger, Baldwin and even Samson. Each was a very effective diocesan, although not always popular with his cathedral priory.