Levi Roach's Æthelred the Unready is both a biography and a narrative account of the social and political contexts in which King Æthelred II reigned and to which he was responding. Roach's thesis is clear throughout: “The contention of the present book is less that Æthelred was a ‘good’ king than that he is too complex and interesting to be dismissed as a ‘bad’ or ‘weak’ one. Or, in other words, if Æthelred failed—and in some sense he clearly did—it is our task to understand why” (323). Roach hopes to uncover Æthelred the man, his personality, and his thought processes. He usefully compares politics in England to those on the Continent, presenting an England far from insular but rather playing a part in “a broader process whereby a common European elite emerged in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries” (189). He offers subtle readings of the politics of Æthelred's court, offering comparison with previous courts, both English and continental, to show that many points where commentators have found fault with the king were commonplace and to highlight where Æthelred really did make innovations.

While some of what Roach presents is necessarily and self-consciously speculative, he successfully draws together information from a wide range of contemporary materials to present Æthelred as a king who adopted and believed in the reformist rhetoric of religious purity as the foundation of national success. He shows how Æthelred's attempts to govern through policies built on such a foundation were one of the main reasons for his failure: although he followed policies similar to those that worked during the stability of Edgar's reign, they were insufficient to address the instability caused by the Scandinavian invasions and natural disasters of Æthelred's, and they exacerbated political rivalries within the nation.

Throughout the book, Roach makes a welcome effort to speak to both scholarly and general audiences. At the outset he invokes familiar caricatures of Æthelred, such as William of Malmesbury's depiction of the dissolute king who fouled his baptismal font as a baby and grew up fearing candles because his mother beat him with them. He also blends discussion of scholarly and popular explorations into Æthelred, juxtaposing scholarly studies such as Ryan Lavelle's Æthelred II (2002) and Ann Williams's Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (2003) with popular historical fiction like Patricia Bracewell's novels on Emma of Normandy, Shadow of the Crown (2013) and The Price of Blood (2015). As he advances beyond the introduction, the scholarly supersedes the popular, but Roach is quite happy to lay out the narratives that earlier historians produced and the conspiracies that they embraced, such as the implication of Æthelred's mother, Ælfthryth, in the murder of his half-brother, Edward. Yet, in response to caricature or conspiracy, Roach scrupulously assesses exactly what the evidence, especially the most contemporary evidence, can support, as well as where that evidence, even in its silences, may indicate uncertainty about events among contemporaries. Even when speculating, he is balanced and presents the interpretations that are possible given what the evidence may show. For instance, discussing Edward the Martyr's first charters, he suggests the ways that they may indicate either a cordial relationship between Edward and Æthelred or the politics surrounding different factions in the succession dispute.

By addressing both scholarly and general audiences, Roach is compelled to explain more than he might otherwise do. He lays out the kinds of evidence available—charters, royal decrees, coinage, and chronicles—describing what they are and what kinds of information they may offer. He explains in brief the organization of government in the form of shire, hundred, and local assemblies, as well as the royal officers such as ealdormen and reeves who administered them, all of which prove important in understanding the consolidation of royal authority under Edgar and, later, Æthelred. He also demonstrates a true talent for distilling complicated historical developments and their significance clearly and briefly, as well as putting English and Continental events in dialogue: he lays out ninth-century Carolingian monastic reform in two paragraphs in order to discuss how the English reformers drew on and adapted that model.

Because of his desire to draw in a general audience and his willingness to speculate, there are two aspects to this book that may make a scholarly audience already versed in the evidence impatient. There is a good deal of repetition; there are reminders at various points what terms like diploma mean, often repeating definitions nearly word for word, as well as repeated accounts concerning fairly major historical figures. Second, when Roach imagines the mental and emotional state of historical figures, he imposes his own interpretation of events—a perfectly responsible thing to do in a biographical study—but the imagined psychological portrait of Æthelred is variably compelling. The portrait of a prince frustrated by being denied the throne that he had been promised in favor of his half-brother seems to imagine an adult, or at least adolescent, understanding of politics that just does not square with the earlier description of the boy who was merely the focal point of political factions jockeying for position. Yet, the description of the young king coming into his own and asserting his independence against the regency of his mother and Bishop Æthelwold is quite convincing, and the imagined psychology of the king read through the so-called “penitential charters” of the 990s makes tangible the anxieties of those who truly believed that a nation succeeded or failed according to God's support.

Overall, this book is historically sound, narratively engaging, and has a limpid and lively prose style that will carry even a moderately interested reader through discussions of diplomas and coins. As a complete study or merely in sections, it will prove useful in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Roach provides a full, thorough, and up-to-date bibliography that runs to thirty pages and will support any who wish to delve further into the topics contained in the book. This book is a welcome contribution to the scholarship on Æthelred and his milieu.