The ten papers in this volume concern leading individuals in the Anglo-Saxon Church: largely bishops and abbots, but occasionally special individuals of lower position such as the venerable Bede. The authors approach their subjects from several different points of view. Martin Ryan, Nicholas Higham and Joyce Hill consider how (respectively) Egbert, archbishop of York (735–66), Bede and Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne (993–1002) involved themselves with aspects of literate Christian culture, as educated clergy were generally expected to do. Debby Banham contributes an essay on a related subject: the possible promotion by Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester (963–84), of monastic sign language, as part of the Benedictine reform in the tenth century. Cassandra Rhodes and Gale Owen-Crocker write on how abbots and other leaders were conceived of by others: as pseudo-maternal figures in writing and as pillars of authority in art – interpretations with (in both cases) centuries of broader Christian tradition behind them. Engagement with the worldly affairs of land and politics is the focus of the papers by Allan Scott McKinley, Dominik Wassenhoven and Alexander Rumble. They take in turn the early bishops of Worcester, the episcopal role of bishops in the succession politics of mid tenth-century England and the developing roles of two late Anglo-Saxon archbishops of Canterbury, Ælfheah (1006–12) and Stigand (1052–70). The editor himself also contributes an important introduction surveying the expectations of bishops and abbots in the early Middle Ages, with specific reference to England. Rumble's preface and introduction succeed in bringing a sense of structure to the volume's otherwise quite disparate contents: the point is, as he puts it, ‘to illustrate the important and various roles played by individual leading ecclesiastics in England’. Yet he also acknowledges that, as with any work focusing on the contribution of medieval individuals, difficulties remain. How far did bishops or abbots as a whole meet expectations? What factors of personality, circumstance and evidence permitted some among them to achieve greater reputations than others? To what extent do surviving sources present an idealised composite or unrepresentative snippet of an ecclesiastic's career? Many of these questions lie implicitly behind the papers in this volume. Nevertheless, more head-on treatment of how far the Anglo-Saxon Church enjoyed, and was guided by, effective personal leadership might have been appreciated, as would a direct discussion of female church leadership and its distinctive features. On the whole, however, this stands as a valuable collection of essays on a range of important subjects, linked by the interplay between leading individuals and the institution of which they formed part.