There has been no shortage of books on the history of Westminster Abbey as Tony Trowles's 2005 bibliography (Westminster Abbey Record Series iv) has demonstrated, but this monograph concentrates on just one aspect of the abbey's thousand-year history: it describes the close links between crown and cloister over those years. Not only is Westminster the coronation church, it is the last resting place of thirteen kings and sixteen queens. Then there have been many other royal ceremonials, not least in recent years, royal weddings. Both authors are already in our debt for earlier writings on various aspects of the abbey's history, so that they are well able to incorporate the fruits of contemporary scholarship. That the history of the monarchy is closely bound up with both the pre-Reformation life of the Benedictine monastery and the subsequent collegiate church is amply detailed. Though at times, presumably in order not to unbalance the contents, there is a brevity which may prove tantalising to those not well versed in the small print of English history. They may be mystified, for instance, by ‘George i had already locked up his wife because of her alleged infidelity’ (p. 57). And it was perhaps delicacy which influenced the somewhat frustrating information that Edward ii was ‘murdered in a particularly painful way’ (p. 62). The book is beautifully illustrated, but it is always much more than an attractive coffee table book. In a commendatory message the queen writes that the close association between the crown and Westminster Abbey ‘is one which reflects the special link between the abbey and the life of the nation as a whole’. This book more than adequately details the evidence for that.