Like its eponymous river, this book is of two halves: one written by a father, an established author of many school textbooks, the other by his daughter, based on a second-year undergraduate and an MPhil dissertation (pp 143–4). Broadly speaking, paternal influence drives the first half of the book, daughterly knowledge the second.

After ‘The Main Evidence Base’ in Chapter One – an awkwardly handled list that begs the question for whom is the book intended – Chapters Two to Six develop a chronologically based narrative and discussion of the period c ad 300–1100. In an old-fashioned sort of history devoid of social and economic considerations, the comings and goings of kings, queens, their chief retainers and top ecclesiastics dominate proceedings in the area that is now Gloucestershire, north Somerset and Wiltshire. The basic plot is given away in the subtitle. It is that, as a frontier, the history of the ‘Bristol Avon’ from Avonmouth in the west, where it joins the Severn, upstream to Bath or more specifically the mini-gorge at Limpley Stoke, is different from that of the upper reaches of the same river as its line curves east from Bradford on Avon and then wiggles somewhat inconspicuously north towards Malmesbury. Though passing through an area that was often a border zone during the period under review, this eastern stretch of the river was seldom recognised as a formal frontier and is not one today. Contrast that with the western Avon, which can be convincingly argued to have been a frontier in late prehistoric times through, on and off, to the present.

Though much of the detail of the charter-based evidence used here is new to this reviewer, the basic hypothesis is not. Nor is the idea of a hill-fort-based ‘sub-kingdom’ of some sort in north Somerset in the fifth to sixth centuries (therefore implying a frontier along the western Avon). But, while declaring an interest, my main reason for raising this particular matter is that the idea and its implications are very much based on the excavation of Cadbury-Congresbury c 1970, a key site for the Whittock hypothesis; yet it is mentioned but once (p 40) and then only with secondary references. No reference at all is made to the substantial final excavation report masterminded by our late Fellow Philip Rahtz (Rahtz et al 1992). No wonder the Whittock discussion shows no awareness of the nature or context of, for example, the 720 excavated sherds of Mediterranean pottery, and plumps so incautiously for only one of the range of interpretative options. Just search ‘Cadbury- Congresbury’ online for several more authoritative summaries.

Throughout the book, indeed, the authors convey an impression of awkwardness in handling archaeological evidence: it does not ‘speak’ to them as do charters. But, in contrast and very much using charters, a credible case is made, for example, for the careful deployment of ecclesiastical centres such as minsters and monasteries along the whole river as tactical expressions of ‘frontiermanship’ when new Anglo-Saxon territories were jostling for space both before and after the Viking wars (Chapters Five and Six).

On practical matters, the book cries out for maps: not everyone is as familiar as are the authors with their region’s topography, and some good local detailed maps could have clarified description as well as shortened text. The single map, placed (arguably upside down) before the title page, is not listed or referenced. The unlisted, unnumbered photographs, clumped together between pp 96 and 97, are not referred to anywhere either. The referencing system is a sort of ‘hybrid Harvard’: references are by in-text numbers supra to ‘Notes’ (pp 123–34), where bibliographical detail is mixed up with explanatory notes, in some cases quite long ones. The bibliographical references in the ‘Notes’ are often in a form suitable for in-text referencing but are just as likely to be of the ‘op cit / ibid’ variety. The bibliography itself (pp 135–42) is interestingly eclectic, but, unforgivably, no index is provided.

A book that should have been meat and drink to this reviewer, an ex-resident and ex-student of the Bath area, has proved unenjoyable both to read and to review. While academic in nature and honest in intent, and with merit in some respects, it is not a scholarly or authoritative publication, because too much of it is unoriginal or derivative, and simply as a book it requires better design and editing to carry off its complexities as a detailed local study and, even more fundamentally, more thought about for whom it is written.