After the efforts of Goffart, de Nie, Heinzelmann, Halsall and others, one might have thought that there was little more to be squeezed out of the works of Gregory of Tours. E. T. Dailey's lively reading of Gregory for what he has to say about women proves otherwise. He demonstrates Gregory's literary skills as a writer with an aristocratic and episcopal viewpoint whose ideal woman was his mother, Armentaria. She was a widow who chose chastity and good works, but who also upheld family honour and aristocratic values. Other women he judged according to this template, his judgement also being coloured by his own dealings with them. Where he was basically ignorant about powerful women, as in the case of Amalsuntha, he let his imagination and his prejudices power his judgement. Dailey is at his best on Gregory's treatment of royal women. Gregory did not like it when Merovingians consorted with low-born women, and he was strongly disapproving when royal widows and discards tried to hang on to power and influence. Kings who married the low-born were lustful, and the women, especially the low-born, who tried to cling on were ill-intentioned and even evil. But beneath Gregory's judgemental narrative Dailey detects an intelligent marriage strategy born out of the necessity of producing royal heirs which kept the bloodline going for nearly three hundred years. He yet again nails the old view that the Merovingians practised polygamy, or more correctly, polygyny. In the course of his survey, Dailey rehearses what one might term the set-pieces of Gregory's writing about women, chiefly on Radegund and the revolt of the Holy Cross nuns, and on Brunhild and Fredegund. Gregory does not come out of this well, covering his own back and advancing his own interests. Though he praised Brunhild (his patron) and castigated Fredegund (his nemesis), Dailey convincingly argues that there was not actually much difference in the behaviour of the two. It is, he demonstrates, Gregory's literary skills which have persuaded us otherwise. For these and many other insights this little book is a pleasure to read, and it does add to our understanding of Gregory as an author. One must say, however, that for a short work at a relatively high price, there are rather too many typographical errors.