The author was a distinguished curator of manuscripts at the British Museum. Her previous book (Brown Reference Brown2007) distilled much of her knowledge and insight. Art of the Islands sets out with the ambition to be the first book ‘to provide an introduction to and overview of’ all surviving media (p 1). It is not an in-depth scholarly monograph, but seeks to supply a general outline of the metalwork, sculpture and, above all, the decorated books of the post Roman period. It explores the interconnections between them and how they may fit into a narrative dominated by kings and churchmen.

Much material covered in Brown’s previous book reappears in this one, such as her recognition that lead-point (here illustrated, p 73) and a form of lightbox were used by the illuminator of the Lindisfarne Gospels – re-dated to ad 715–20 on the basis of details of its liturgical readings (p 53) – and the revelations from modern science about the pigments that the illustrator used. Included within this, though not in Brown’s previous, book is a convincing comparison between the Man figure in the Book of Durrow and Armenian images of priests, not only demonstrated in their vestments, but also in the odd way that their lower legs dangle lifelessly below (pp 134–5). Brown has previously made a major contribution to the recognition of a Mercian group of manuscripts of the eighth and ninth centuries, a theme which she is here able to broaden with discussion of sculptures and the Staffordshire hoard. Her statement that the inscription on one of the latter’s objects is dated ‘on palaeographic grounds to the late seventh century’ (p 112) is authoritative. Also, an important new contribution is her recognition that ‘at least two English scribes’ worked at St Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai in the eighth century – part of a theme arguing that Near Eastern influence has been underestimated in the period (p 137).

Away from manuscripts, Brown is less reliable. A connection between the bull carvings and well at Burghead and ‘ancient Mediterranean cults and subterranean cisterns’, such as on Malta (p 9 and again on p 44) would involve a jump of several centuries, and the well-chamber is not certainly of the same date as the carvings. The silver-gilt great square-headed brooch from the Isle of Wight does not illustrate the tastes of Angles and Jutes (pp 22–4); Hines, whose work is cited, has only one example of that type of brooch in East Kent, home-base of the Jutes (if they had one), and his groupings suggest that they were widespread until well into the sixth century, when they became focused on the east side of the country – Anglian territory, but only part of it, for there were then none in the West Midlands, as there had been previously. The St Oswald’s, Gloucester, sculpture is probably not ‘Anglo-Scandinavian’ (p 144), but belongs to a group that Cramp discussed at length, and saw as perhaps a Christian bulwark against pagan interlopers, not evidence of assimilation (Cramp Reference Cramp2006, pp 42–8). Hog-back tombs do not ‘abound’ (p 196), but are localised in northern England, with one or two outliers.

The text is very well written and free of typographical errors, but after deduction of the space used for illustrations, wide margins and a generous font size, not very long. Repetitions and superfluities are, therefore, annoying. Was the Battle of Clontarf culturally significant, and, even if it was, did Brian Boru’s full name need to take up half a line on p 11 and again on p 169? ‘Irish missionary saints’ and Gildas also make a second appearance, on p 153 after an earlier outing on pp 7–8. The St Catherine’s scribes of p 137 reappear on p 165. Druids feature on p 4, and again on p 167, without a warning that neither Tacitus nor Caesar had personal experience of them in Britain. Is it relevant to know that ‘Petrine’ was ‘Chalcedonian Orthodox’ (p 15) and did the Synod of Whitby merit second treatment on p 42? Greater awareness of what has gone before should also have been shown; points made about the Book of Durrow on pp 135–6 could usefully have referred back to pp 54–6 and p 94; discussion of the Junius 11 manuscript on pp 190–2 could have referred back to its illustration on p 37 – for those, the index will serve a reader who remembers the earlier discussion but not where it occurred, but neither bulls not Burghead feature in it, so it is not reliable.

The publisher is the Bodleian Library, but it is hard to see why that institution has taken on a book presumably intended for a wide readership, which does not foreground Oxford collections and does not even list them in the credits (p 229). Junius 11 is one of the Bodleian’s manuscripts, as are Tanner 10 and others, but the Alfredian Tanner 20, mentioned on p 145, is not illustrated; nor is the ‘Leofric Missal’. An academic library should have had a reader able to point out that the long bibliography does not contain all the works cited in the text: it is divided into sections, which makes searching difficult, but a key omission seems to be Brown and Goskar 2015, which is particularly unfortunate because pp 164–5 show images of a sculpture that have been digitally enhanced. These images are much clearer than most of the other sculptures’ illustrations, and some readers can be expected to want to know more about the techniques used and whether a laser scan was involved. Apart from sculptures, the picture quality is generally adequate, although items in the Staffordshire hoard are badly out of focus (fig 57); that is presumably the publisher’s fault, as a very similar photograph has been reproduced satisfactorily elsewhere (Webster Reference Webster2012, fig 78). A publisher’s reader should also have pointed out that Claudius’s invasion and Constantine’s adoption of Christianity both took place in CE years, not BCE (pp 4 and 6). Such a reader can be excused for not realising that fig 78 is not the sculpture that it is said to be on p 147, but common sense should have made it obvious that the person with the wax tablet in fig 116 is bearded and, therefore, not, despite the caption, John the Baptist’s mother.