Gerard Wegemer sets out to explore the influence of More's classical learning (the ‘arts of liberty’ of the title) on his early political writings, defined here as up to and including Utopia. The avowed emphasis is on how More interpreted the ‘generations of civil war’ suffered by England and the solution he offered. Early chapters map More's engagement with the classics and Wegemer then turns to analysis of More's own writings. The exercise is carried out in a sort of humanist bubble, with little attempt to place More within the context of his own times. One facet of this is linguistic. It is taken as axiomatic that More's use of Latin is strictly classical. In places this is clearly not the case – as with More's use of feralis (p. 64 n. 50) about which Wegemer makes heavy weather. This is a minor example, but it raises the question of exactly how More was interpreting words such as princeps or consilium that had other, non-classical implications for contemporaries. It may be, as Wegemer assumes, that More meant them to be used in their classical sense but this merits discussion rather than being taken for granted, not just in terms of More's own intentions but of how his readers would have received them. A different but analogous issue is posed by the discussion of Richard III. Wegemer appears to regard this as a straightforward exposition of a problem (civil war) to which More was proposing a solution. But, as most historians now accept, the work's treatment of the recent past is tendentious, and it would have been interesting to have had some discussion of how far the ‘problem’ has been reformulated to make the author's point. Wegemer does note that the assertion that parliament's ‘authority in England is supreme and absolute’ has been questioned by More's editors, but allows the words to stand, rather than asking why, given its inaccuracy, More made the claim. As all this implies (and the bibliography confirms) Wegemer is not very well-informed about the realities of political culture in this period. He also relies heavily for contemporary events on More's sixteenth-century biographers, rather than more recent discussions of his career, and one result is that More is presented, even in the early stages of his career, as an outspoken critic of the crown, always in danger of the king's displeasure. Much of this does not ring true – such as the claim that he feared for his life after speaking out against taxation in the 1504 parliament and ‘had not the king soon after died’ (in reality five years later) he would have fled overseas. This emphasis presumably helps to explain Wegemer's insistence that More's eulogy on Henry viii (the Coronation ode of 1509) is really to be read ironically and hence as savage and dangerous criticism. More is only prepared to enter royal service on his own terms, a move post-dated here. In general contemporary political life is presented as thoroughly thuggish: ‘How could anyone hope to make appealing to such warrior barons raised on chivalric “glory” a new kind of leader dedicated to “common wealth”, to peace and prosperity for the whole of the land?’ (p. 47). The exception to this sombre picture, and the one contemporary model which is admitted to have been an influence on More, is the city of London. This is developed rather impressionistically – Londoners were not ‘a formidable and enduring force against Edward iv and Richard ii’ (p. 135) and the city was not unusual in allowing no slavery (p. 186) – but it does at least locate More within his own culture rather than leaving him in an historical vacuum.