Dr Julian Munby, FSA’s distinguished career as an archaeologist, historian and antiquary, stretching back over fifty years, has won him many friends and admirers, as well as a reputation for omniscience. His interests are of remarkable breadth, ranging from medieval woodwork and construction methods, to fortifications, the history of British antiquarianism, topographical art and the history of his hometown, Oxford. Two Oxonian friends, who will also be known to many Antiquaries, have done him proud with this fine and entertaining volume of essays in honour of his seventieth birthday.

This is no dry collection of academic papers: the volume is as individual and idiosyncratic as its dedicatee. It begins with an extended preface in which both editors, Munby’s children and two other Oxford friends, Jane Woodcock and Deirdre Ford, share their memories of him. The bulk of the volume is divided into four sections, reflecting major areas of Munby’s interests: ‘Oxford’; ‘Architecture and Topography’; ‘Art and the Antiquary’; and ‘The Written Word’.

Julian has made major contributions to the understanding of the history of Oxford himself, and the first section has four wide-ranging essays. Dan Miles, FSA’s paper, ‘The development of Oxford dendrochronology’, provides a full bibliography and a referenced list of 138 buildings or sites that have been dendro-dated in the area. Much the longest essay in the volume, occupying seventy-five pages, is ‘The Oxford races and the racecourses on Port Meadow’, by archaeologist George Lambrick, FSA. This is a remarkably holistic piece of work, embracing archaeological survey of the site and detailed documentary history, which reconstructs a whole missing piece of Oxford history. Debbie Dance, of the Oxford Preservation Trust, presents a short analysis of two remarkable historic views of the city, by J M W Turner and Michael Angelo Rooker. Finally, Malcolm Graham, a retired librarian and curator, studies the work of the wonderfully-named Evacustes Phipson, painter of topographical watercolours of the city, and compares them to the equivalent views today. Phipson’s watercolours were laboriously faithful representations, and the deadening quality of post-war development is all too apparent.

The second section ‘Architecture and Topography’ is inevitably something of an Omnium-Gatherum. Anthony King leads off with a reflection on ‘The Temple at Bath: Classical, Romano-Celtic or somewhere in between?’. The archaeological evidence for the form of the temple is uncertain, but the author concludes that classical architectural forms were used to house a hybrid Romano-Celtic cult, that of Sulis Minerva. Martin Biddle presents a modest addition to his published Winchester studies, identifying a significant historic boundary-line to the north of the city that may have represented the northern edge of the Roman and Saxon settlement. Edmund Simons, FSA, an old pupil from Oxford Archaeology, then presents a thoughtful analysis of two rock-cut dwellings, Nanny’s Rock on Kinver Edge and Hardwick’s Cell at Hartlebury, both in Worcestershire. These complex spaces, both of which exhibit many signs of occupation, lack dating evidence but are identified from a variety of antiquarian sources as hermitages, probably of medieval origin. James Munby’s chapter on ‘The legend of Box Tunnel’ recapitulates the well-known story that the sunrise can be seen, through the length of the tunnel, on one or two days, possibly on Brunel’s birthday: his conclusion is that the evidence is inconclusive.

The third section is equally varied. The volume’s editors, Martin Henig, FSA and Nigel Ramsay, FSA, are both distinguished curators and antiquaries, and their essays are both substantial. Dr Henig, a celebrated authority on Roman Britain, provides a most interesting account of Roman bronze statues and figures, rediscovered in Britain between 1660 and 1900. Marian Campbell, FSA, formerly of the V&A, analyses a medieval Limoges enamel figure of Christ crucified, robed and crowned, in the collection of Christ Church. Kate Heard, FSA, head of the Print Room in the Royal Library at Windsor, provides a valuable account of W H Pyne’s publication of his celebrated volume Royal Residences, that preserves much that has been since lost by the ‘magic of art’. Lauren Gilmour Gale, FSA, and Sarah Wearne provide an abrupt change of locale with the next paper, about Oswald Jennings Couldrey, an Edwardian schoolboy at Abingdon school, whose precocious artistic talents were put to use in the production of an unofficial school journal, The Dayboy’s Comet. Couldrey’s drawings speak of long-lost traditions of graphic and comic art, and it is to the authors’ and the editors’ credit that they find a place in this volume, alongside the topographical art and the Roman bronzes.

The last section, ‘The Written Word’, is led off by Nigel Ramsay, FSA, the co-editor, with an interesting account of a curious and mostly lost theme in cathedral history, the painted tabulae that told visitors to them about saints, the occupants of tombs and local history. Ramsay lists surviving tabulae at York, Chichester and the Bodleian Library (the last originating from Glastonbury), and recorded examples at St Paul’ s Cathedral, Westminster, Lichfield and Lincoln. John Blair, FSA, doyen of Anglo-Saxon scholars, takes a break from his normal field of study to write about Thomas Baskerville, topographical writer in Restoration England. The lengthy extracts from Baskerville’s Narrative of his Travels, of 1681–2, and his Verse Narrative of his Upper Thames Travels, of 1692, show that he was a valuable witness, and a fine bad poet: the William McGonagall of the late seventeenth century, as Blair points out. The volume ends, appropriately, in archives and libraries, with David Ganz’s essay ‘The study of palaeography in England: Thomas Astle’. Astle, on the staff of the British Museum and then the State Paper Office, pioneered the study of historic script in England, collected manuscripts and printed books, and published extensively on these subjects. Astle was one of the scholars who created the rich culture of archaeological scholarship and enquiry that the Society of Antiquaries of London continues to sustain, and of which Doctors Munby, Henig and Ramsay are such distinguished pillars and ornaments. This volume is a mixed bag, and its range may seem a little eccentric, but it is none the worse for that. It is a fitting tribute to a fine and well-loved archaeologist. Any reader of this journal would find something to enjoy in it – and learn something from it.