The opening chapters of this important book are devoted to attitudes to tomb monuments under the Tudors, and the antiquarian studies – often originating in concerns about the erasure of heraldry – to which assaults on monuments gave rise, renewed destruction in the seventeenth century, and the efforts of contemporary historians and travellers to record what was in danger of being lost. They are followed by three excellent studies of aspects of the impact of early modern destruction on monuments: the tomb of King Arthur at Glastonbury, the Percy tomb in Beverley Minster and the Herbert monuments at Abergavenny. In each case Phillip Lindley shows the original form of these monuments or assemblages of monuments and corrects the ways in which assumptions about the damage have lead to misreadings of them.

Lindley questions the commonplace that ‘attacks on monuments during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not very significant in number and only had a limited impact on their survival’: interments in religious foundations that suffered in the Dissolution were largely destroyed, despite the efforts of families such as the Manners to translate the tombs of their ancestors. There was a disproportionate destruction of clergy monuments. He charts the way in which vandalism is registered by even the earliest antiquaries, and how the increase of such vandalism is traceable in the records of these recorders and their followers. Despite legislation by Edward vi and Elizabeth i, tomb monuments were vulnerable, and in the early seventeenth century they came under attack from both extreme Protestants, who opposed all images as idolatrous, and Laudian reformers, who deprecated the intrusion of personal commemorative sites into the sanctuary: an effigial monument at the east end of a church was assailable by both camps.

The heroes of this book are those who cared for the threatened past: patrons like Sir Christopher Hatton who, in the 1630s, foresaw the destruction of monuments and sent out recorders to capture what was there before it was too late, or chorographers like William Camden (who, Lindley argues, was focused less on the Roman and more on the medieval past of Britain than is thought), William Dugdale, or the perceptive Sampson Erdeswick. The importance of networking in the antiquarian community forms a sub-theme in this book: Camden taught Cotton, whose library became the centre of the early modern chorographic enterprise, of which the recording of monuments became part. (These networks extended into the arts: Ben Jonson was a fellow pupil and friend of Cotton and remained close to Camden. The earl of Arundel, a patron of Dugdale, was joined with John Donne as a trustee of Dulwich College, founded by Donne’s son-in-law, the actor Edward Alleyn.) John Weever is given his due as a recorder, a theorist and an historian of monuments; Lindley touches on the evidence provided by Weever that the biographical/poetic epitaph, often associated with the early modern period, was already evident on (now destroyed) late medieval monuments.

Lindley’s ingenious study of the lost (spurious) tomb of King Arthur at Glastonbury encapsulates the confusions faced by early antiquaries. The monument seems to have been constructed (following the opportune ‘discovery’ of the bones of Arthur and Guinevere) as a means of attracting revenue to the Abbey after the devastating fire of 1184. Moved and modified in the thirteenth century, its existence convinced John Leland of the historical actuality of Arthur. Leland’s description of what he took to be the authentication of the discovery of Arthur and Guinevere’s bodies enables Lindley to reconstruct their spurious (if authentically twelfth-century) monument. Lindley’s other case studies are of surviving objects: the Percy tomb – where he uses the records of early visitors to demonstrate the original function and appearance and that the tomb chest removed in the nineteenth century was part of the original design – and the monuments in the Herbert chapel, where he is able to show that the state and disposition of the monuments before the 1995 programme of works was the result of Civil War vandalism and Restoration restoration.

Annotations are in the form of endnotes, making this profusely referenced book awkward to read; the format demands either a bibliography or indexing of the notes as well as the main text. But the standard of production is high, and the book, with its many illustrations, provides a happy contrast with inferior products from major university presses which cost nearly twice as much. Phillip Lindley and his publisher provide a model for academic books: it is to be hoped that others follow their example.