The British contribution to the international corpus of sculpture of the Roman world (CSIR) was inaugurated in 1977, with E J Phillips’s catalogue of the material from Corbridge and the eastern sector of Hadrian’s Wall. Since then, a further nine fascicules have been published, covering Bath and the rest of Wessex, Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales, the western sector of Hadrian’s Wall, the Cotswolds, eastern England, the north-west Midlands and now London and the south-east. The project was initially carried forward with some momentum, the first six fascicules appearing by 1988 and two more in 1994. But subsequently the pace has slowed, with a gap of ten years between fascicules 8 and 9, and eleven years between 9 and 10.

The delay in the appearance of fascicule 10 has been compensated by two major improvements in the series: the introduction of colour illustrations and the use of scientific techniques to identify the geological sources of the stones. Of these two innovations, the colour photographs are less fundamental given that most of the pieces are monochrome. However, they enormously enhance the appearance of the volume (see especially the bronzes in pls 77–83) and, in distinguishing the different rock types macroscopically and microscopically (pls 9–12), provide an important back-up to the petrological analyses. These analyses, which are the work of Kevin Hayward, take the study of Romano-British sculpture into a new dimension. For the first time we can say, with some confidence, which quarries supplied the materials for given works and thus deduce patterns of trade and manufacture both within Roman Britain and, where Gaulish sources are identified, between Britain and its Continental neighbours. It becomes possible, for example, by combining stylistic and petrographic evidence, to make a strong case for sculptors from the Cotswolds being active in London (see the depictions of hunter gods in catalogue numbers 73–5). Ironically, this progress comes at a cost: it exposes the vagueness of the petrographic attributions in the preceding nine fascicules of CSIR i. These earlier volumes now, suddenly, seem out of date.

In terms of organisation, the new fascicule tends to echo the methodology of its predecessors, in that much of the material is arranged thematically under headings such as Graeco-Roman deities, oriental deities, funerary monuments, portraits, architectural carvings, etc. This approach produced some anomalies in earlier volumes: groups of sculptures from a single site, for instance, became dispersed within the catalogues, while uncertainties of identification hindered attempts at classification (see Ling Reference Ling1995). Such problems are not entirely resolved in the new volume: for example, some of the items categorised as female portraits (catalogue 25–8) could well be goddesses. But an important step forward is the division of the catalogue into three overriding sections according to materials: marble; other stone; and bronze. This fits with the concern for geological sourcing and also avoids the indiscriminate mingling of objects whose materials (such as stone and bronze) endow them with very different properties.

Since this volume deals with the capital and surrounding regions (Greater London, plus Hertfordshire, Surrey and Kent), it includes many of the most notable sculptures from the province. Among them are the pieces from the 1950s excavations in the Walbrook Mithraeum, the two portrait busts from the villa at Lullingstone (here the authors adopt Richard De Kind’s controversial proposal to identify them with the future emperor Pertinax and his father, P Helvius Successus) and the two monuments brilliantly reconstructed by the late Tom Blagg (whose contributions to the early stages in the compilation of the present catalogue are rightly given due credit) from fragments found in the London riverside wall. Alongside these celebrities we find many works that are little known but no less interesting, such as the quaint relief of the birth of Helen and the Dioscuri from Duke Street, Aldgate (catalogue 66).

This is a seminal publication; it is, moreover, elegantly written and remarkably free of errors and misprints. We must hope that the one remaining fascicule (11, Northern Britain south of Hadrian’s Wall) will not have to wait too long to see the light of day.