The Cultural Legacy of the Royal Game of the Goose gives us a rare glimpse into the history of a game and into the complex and extensive knowledge necessary for its understanding. Adrian Seville studied the Game of the Goose partially by collecting the boards themselves. He has devoted much of his time researching his own specimens as well as those found at various institutions making them accessible and relevant to historians. The resulting treasure trove of information explains and illustrates in great detail the wide-ranging interests to which the Game of the Goose now contributes. Board game historians have welcomed him for many years at their conferences, and collectors similarly welcome his advice and insight. A book that expounds much of Seville’s scholarly achievement is a welcome, perhaps even a necessary, step to show that the study of this game is not a singular endeavour by one enthusiastic collector but a wide-ranging exploit with a far-reaching significance.

The title of the book highlights one of the broader impacts of the Game of the Goose. Its cultural legacy and enduring influence, especially in Western Europe, is amply illustrated. The publisher has allowed for high-quality images, several in full colour, throughout this volume; but the reader who browses through this book is also treated to a host of tables, lists and even charts that illustrate, summarise and analyse the history and distribution of the game.

The author has written at least two books at once. One is a detailed overview of Goose games and their respective histories, a country by country understanding of the publishers, the history of printing as well as the presence of these games in collections around the world. Folded into this history is an analysis of material and visual aspects of the game that trace it to fifteenth-century Italy and finds separate developments in individual European countries. It looks at close-ups of imagery and analyses the rules. At the same time, it is a book about the cultural legacy of a game with an influence ranging from advertising to propaganda and from education to satire, a book that tells us a story about how a game, seemingly simple in design, has had such an enduring legacy. The book does not read like a long essay that develops this latter point. Instead, it provides all the details necessary before anyone could attempt such an endeavour, and it convincingly shows that this legacy is there for the taking. The book is divided into two parts and the second, much shorter, part speaks of this legacy, mostly addressing twentieth-century examples, while the first part is a historical overview and analysis.

Adrian Seville brings his understanding and expertise in a format that forces the reader to understand that the details of a single square are similarly important for tracing the history of a Goose Game as they are relevant for the enduring legacy of this game as a whole. His three charts on p 220 – the only ones in the book – illustrate this interwoven approach perhaps most clearly as one speaks of types of games, the other of different printing processes and the third of track geometry. The first engages board game history in general, the second includes the material culture of printed matter and the third is Goose Game specific. They belong to the same book, the same page, because the understanding of this game needs all these elements at the same time.

The book is not meant to be exhaustive because, for further lists, even reference lists, the reader is directed to a website. Instead, the author has found an admirable middle road. The book provides all the lists and illustrations necessary to understand the details of the history of the game but not all possible historical examples and references to which it is related. A modest index allows for additional searches across a book that is already highly organised. At the end of the book, the reader feels that a new world has been carefully pried open by situating a game carefully in Western European history and by constructing arguments that range from an art historical analysis of imagery on individual squares to the history of printing techniques. Immersed in both entertaining and aesthetically pleasing details, a larger portrayal of the Game of the Goose is now firmly imprinted in and part of the Western imagination. With luck, two dice and sixty-three squares, this story will be part of many others to come.