So much has been written on the life of Thomas Becket that historians are at risk of overlooking the significance of his posterity and cult. Such, with full acknowledgement of the work of Tancred Borenius and Raymonde Foreville, is the contention of this collection of nine essays. As in many other such collections, now as numerous as sand on the seashore, the contributors here fall into three categories: those who explore new evidence citing mostly primary sources, those who summarise a wide range of primary and secondary authorities seeking to advance on previous conclusions, and those who merely repeat their own (or indeed others’) existing work. Amongst the first category, Anne Duggan stands supreme. Cutting through a tangle of technicalities, she explains both the significance and the various forms of the liturgies devised for St Thomas after 1170. At the same time, and here setting a trend for most of the experts who follow, she reveals the extent to which Becket's cult was by no means the instrument of anti-royal propaganda that many modern commentators, most notably Josiah Cox Russell, have supposed it to be. On the contrary, and here following a line of argument first exploited for the later Middle Ages by Simon Walker, from as early as 1174 Becket and his shrine became the object of royal favour. Had this not been the case, it is doubtful whether the cult could have survived, let alone prospered. As late as 1520, when Henry viii conducted the Emperor Charles v on a tour of Becket's shrine, St Thomas was celebrated not just as a critic but as an advocate of English kingship. In these circumstances, Henry viii’s repudiation of the cult appears all the more shocking and destabilising. Carrying this theme forwards, both Colette Bowie, on Becket's cult in Saxony, and José Manuel Cerda, on Spain especially Castile, assemble useful dossiers, demonstrating the extent to which Henry ii’s daughters, Matilda and Eleanor, promoted Becket's cult in filial duty, not at all in disobedience to their father. An important piece of evidence here, on the Anglo-Norman marriage of Pedro count of Lara, can be found in one of the Llanthony cartularies in the National Archives at Kew, first noticed by Charles Evans in A. de Panat and others (eds), Mélanges offerts à Szabolcs de Vajay … a l'occasion de son cinquantième anniversaire (Braga 1971). Meanwhile, Michael Staunton takes us on a lively tour of the chronicle evidence, especially Gervase of Canterbury. What emerges is the extent to which Becket, after 1170, was used as scourge not only of tyrannical kingship but of his successors as archbishop. Few archbishops, and perhaps even fewer popes, could hope to live up to Becket's reputation for uncompromising defence of the Church's ‘liberty’. Marie-Pierre Gelin notes similar themes in her account of the manipulation of the cult by Canterbury's monks. Here, far from eclipsing the earlier veneration of Dunstan or Alphege, Becket was allowed to merge into an ideal type, ‘the good archbishop’, united with his cathedral monks in opposition to any attempt to dissolve the connection between monastery and archiepiscopal administration. Paul Webster's two contributions summarise a great deal of modern work, both on the forensic details of Becket's commemoration, and on the particular circumstances in which the cult contributed to polemic during the Interdict of King John's reign. Two recent contributions to debate here, by Jennifer Jahner, in Thirteenth century England XV (Woodbridge 2015), and above all by Julie Barrau in her definitive study of the use of Scripture in the Becket conflict, Bible, lettres et politique (Paris 2013), should now be added to the bibliography. Elsewhere, Elma Brenner supplies a foretaste of her recent book on Norman leprosaria, noting the adoption of Becket as patron of institutions intended to extend healing both physical and spiritual. Finally, Alyce Jordan examines the context and meaning of the Becket windows at Angers and Coutances, less well known than those at Sens and Chartres. Adopting ‘a triangulatory approach’ (p.172), she proffers ‘a postcolonial reading’ so ‘complex, ambivalent and provocative’ (p.198) that Becket himself might have struggled to construe its meaning. It is a pity that the colour plates used to illustrate her paper are reproduced so muddily and minutely. None the less, she does have interesting remarks to make about the role of the murderer, Hugh de Moreville, as an Anglo-French point of contact. This is a useful collection, well presented, properly indexed, rising above the generally meretricious nature of the genre.