Translating a Ph.D. dissertation into a book is no mean task, but John S. Lee has achieved the feat admirably. He sets out to examine “the relationship between a medieval town and its hinterland” and to explore “the nature and extent of any changes that took place in these links between Cambridge and its region” (p. 1). To this end, the author has carefully probed the records of the borough and the university for the century spanning 1500, paying special attention to information relating to economy and society. There is a healthy balance between primary and secondary source material, with the latter helping to contextualise the former. Even a cursory glance through the bibliography underlines the impressive number and variety of manuscript and primary printed sources consulted. The book is clearly and methodically presented, in an easy-to-read narrative way. It contains over forty figures, most of which supplement the text and help to articulate what a thousand words could not.

In just two hundred pages, Lee covers a wide range of topics, including population, wealth, commerce, land, labor, wheat prices, supply and consumption of food and fuel, and university building projects. He shows how, in many respects, Cambridge was an ordinary mid-ranked English town in the middle ages, but how, in other ways, it was exceptional. For instance, while other urban centres experienced symbiosis between town and castle, in Cambridge the central relationship was between town and university. Indeed, in his chapter on “Cambridge and its society,” the author demonstrates the mutual interdependence and complex alliances that existed between town and gown, and shows that these bodies were not as polarized as many people might have believed.

The greatest strength of this book, however, is its analysis of the town's commercial hinterland. It provides a particularly adept analysis of the geography of the town's trade and a comprehensive reconstruction of its marketing network. Although there was a general trend of population decline in Cambridge from 1377 to 1524, numbers remained at between 4,000 and 5,000 for most of the middle ages (pp. 28–30). Lee demonstrates that throughout this time “for many economic purposes, the town was served by its local region of about 10 to 15 miles in radius” (pp. 6, 7). In this regard, Lee's diagrammatic representations, using five- and ten-mile concentric circles, illustrate just how restricted the economic hinterland of Cambridge was (pp. 87, 99, 156, 157, 158, 159). The point is made, however, that between 1450 and 1560 at least, this local hinterland was just one of “three inter-connecting regions linked to the town”—the others being “a regional hinterland stretching to just over 50 miles away, and more distant ties with other urban centres” (p. 203). Lower value consumables generally came from closer to the town, with more expensive goods being transported over greater distances (p. 172). In time, the colleges at Cambridge appear to have had to look further afield for charcoal and firewood (p. 159)—supplies closer to the town may have been exhausted as forest was felled to make way for food crops.

Having outlined the nature and extent of Cambridge's interconnecting economic regions, Lee concludes by suggesting that the hinterland of most English towns in the middle ages was more restricted than might be assumed. He concludes the book by saying that “concepts that stress the role of towns as promoters of economic activity can be useful in identifying areas of growth, and particularly in highlighting the influence of London, but the size of most medieval towns in England restricted their impact on surrounding regions” (p. 204).