G. T. Dempsey has, over some four decades, published numerous articles about Aldhelm of Malmesbury (c. 639–709) and this book stands as the culmination of his work. In it Dempsey makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature by single-handedly doing for Aldhelm what a team of scholars did for Theodore of Canterbury in the eponymous book, edited by Michael Lapidge and published by Cambridge University Press twenty years ago. That is, Dempsey has provided a meticulous and reliable guide to Aldhelm and his writings by integrating research in Anglo-Saxon and in late antique studies. More specifically, Dempsey analyses Aldhelm's writings, especially his De virginitate, with a view to showing how in them Aldhelm combines his ranging knowledge of Latin Christian texts with the cultural values of his Germanic society by portraying the consecrated virgin as a hero in service of a mighty lord. Along the way, Dempsey also addresses Aldhelm's relationship to Irish learning. Throughout the study, Dempsey is rightly critical of the stultifying effects of deference to the agendas and methodologies of earlier researchers; that independence and Dempsey's competent grasp of trends in the study of late antiquity have disposed him to situate Aldhelm within the general history of Western intellectual developments. Dempsey works confidently through Aldhelm's ghastly Latin, occasionally suggesting valuable emendations to published translations, makes sensible remarks about historical method, and pursues theological questions and their ecclesiastical significance with dispassionate insight. His writing is limpid, even graceful. There are a few cases where it seems that references in the footnotes lack corresponding entries in the bibliography, which is a regrettable blemish on a fine book that is eminently suited to be an introduction to an extraordinary figure who lived in an important period. It is to Dempsey's great credit that he has meticulously shown how ‘Aldhelm spoke directly to the needs and concerns of his aristocratic and nascent-Christian society still imbued with the long-traditional beliefs and patterns of behavior [sic] of their hitherto pagan and barbarian culture’ (p. 28).