The lives of leading figures in the medieval English Church deserve periodically to be reexamined and rewritten in the light of the discovery of new evidence and of shifts in focus among succeeding generations of historians. In the case of William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester (1366–1404), Virginia Davis has performed this reappraisal with uncompromising diligence; in so doing she has made use of new archival sources to present an up-to-date account of the bishop's career as politician and government administrator, as counsellor to three kings and as a high-ranking ecclesiastic who occupied the see of Winchester for almost forty years. Despite her efforts, however – and those of her predecessors, the biographers Lowth and Moberly – the question remains as to whether or not it is possible to write a three-dimensional biography in the absence of any records or writings of a personal, as distinct from an official, nature. Fully aware of the problem Davis has tried to find evidence of the man behind the mask by quoting from the statutes he drew up to govern his two educational foundations, Winchester College and New College Oxford. In them he stated his conviction of the necessity of a thorough grounding in grammar followed by the study of the liberal arts and theology, and his belief that the fruits of education would bring an era in which justice and prosperity would benefit everyone. Wykeham's own formal schooling, which seems to have been limited to what he received at the alta (not aula) scola in Winchester (pp. 8, 9) must have made him sensitive to the need to make education more widely accessible. In the chapter devoted to his collegiate foundations Davis describes in exemplary detail the successive stages of the enterprise from conception to completion, and she includes the exacting financial arrangements that he set in place to secure their future maintenance. The vast sums of money required to fund these two projects came from the wealth that accrued to Wykeham as one of the most conspicuously successful pluralists of his day. Here also the author puts the details before us; but can we be persuaded that, in this case, the end justifies the means? Extant library catalogues of both Wykeham's colleges include books given by the founder, whose selection of texts for his scholars might repay scrutiny as a possible indicator of his knowledge and judgement with regard to learning. As to the reference to novices of St Swithun's cathedral priory attending the city high school (p. 9), I have found no evidence to confirm this statement. Finally, it is a pity that the portrayal of Wykeham in near-contemporary stained glass at New College was not chosen for the dust jacket illustration instead of the garish nineteenth-century depiction that has little to recommend it.