John Skylitzes's chronicle is one of our most important sources on Middle Byzantine political, military and ecclesiastical history. In order to tell his story, Skylitzes cannibalised a variety of earlier narratives. Some, such as the work known as ‘Theophanes Continuatus’, are still extant and collation of this text with Skylitzes's Synopsis has indicated how closely he adhered to this source. But for the era between the mid-tenth and the mid-eleventh century Skylitzes's sources are largely a matter for conjecture, and no other chronicle spanning the whole period is known. A senior judge and Prefect of the city of Constantinople towards the end of the eleventh century, Skylitzes belonged to Alexios i Komnenos's circles, and in composing his Synopsis he seems to have aimed to inform and instruct fellow members of the governing elite. He shows interest in details of military campaigns, including the planning and execution of stratagems, and offers fairly full coverage of goings-on in the Balkans and other border regions, rather than concentrating on events at court, in the manner of some Byzantine narrators. The chronicle's prose style is generally straightforward and unadorned, spiced with anecdotes and aphorisms. Initially, Skylitzes took the empire's story up to 1057, the likely terminus of one of his main (albeit hypothetical) sources. Later, however, he seems to have compiled a sequel running on to c. 1079, and now known as ‘Skylitzes Continuatus’. For this, he drew heavily on a work that is still extant, Michael Attaleiates's History, making only minor additions from other sources. This section of Skylitzes's work is, accordingly, of rather less value to modern historians, and the decision to leave it out of Wortley's translation is fully justifiable. The question of whether Skylitzes is responsible for ‘Skylitzes Continuatus’ receives a basically positive answer in the introduction to this translation. The principal author of the introduction, B. Flusin, offers a review of Skylitzes's more or less likely sources and places the work within the continuum of Byzantine historical writing. Flusin's introduction, like the detailed annotation provided by J.-C. Cheynet, represents an updated version of the scholarly apparatus accompanying the French translation of Skylitzes, published in 2003. On the whole, this pooling of Francophone and Anglophone expertise in the language, literature and history of Byzantium works to good effect. But the English rendering of the French annotation is sometimes misleading, as when the word ‘Boyards’ reproduces the French boyards, rather than anglicising to ‘boyars’ (p. 92 n. 40). And the index falls short of the standard of its French prototype when it conflates two individuals named Kalokyros of the ninth and tenth centuries into a single person. Likewise the two Borises, rulers of Bulgaria in the mid-ninth and mid-tenth century respectively, receive a single entry in the index. One may also cavil occasionally at the English translation itself. Thus rendering proteuon – the Greek term for the leading man of Cherson – as ‘prince’ (p. 265) is infelicitous, and Wortley might have done better to follow the French translation's lead and leave the term untranslated. That said, his rendering is mostly accurate, idiomatic and lucid, conveying the directness and vigour of Skylitzes's style. This work will be of immense value to non-specialist teachers and students, besides offering much to Byzantinists. A key text now awaits reassessment from all sides.