This volume fulfils the stated aim of the Cambridge Companions to Literature series, which is to provide an accessible and affordable introduction to a topic for students and non-specialists alike. Section i (Bede's life and context) considers Bede's life and works within a succession of different settings, including the monastic environment (Michelle P. Brown); secular and political contexts (James Campbell); the world of Latin education (Rosalind Love); the ecclesiastical landscape of Bede's Northumbria (Sarah Foot); and Northumbria's relationships with neighbouring British and Irish kingdoms (Clare Stancliffe). Ian Wood's thought-provoking analysis of the circumstances surrounding the foundation of the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow is particularly insightful; he demonstrates that the idea of Wearmouth-Jarrow as ‘one monastery on two sites’ was artificially constructed to mask a complex reality. The second section of this book (Bede's writings) will be very useful for student readers. The originality of Bede's scholarship is a thematic strand which recurs throughout the essays by Calvin B. Kendall (education); Faith Wallis (science); Scott DeGregorio (the Old Testament); Arthur G. Holder (the New Testament); Lawrence T. Martin (preaching); and Alan Thacker (history). The breadth of this coverage is impressive, although not comprehensive: it is a shame that the readership is not exposed to Bede's Latin poetry in any significant detail. The essays in section ii demonstrate that all of Bede's individual writings were contributions to an ambitious literary programme rooted in the ideals of doctrina christiana. The contributors appreciate that most of their readers will have developed an interest in Bede and his works following initial exposure to the Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum; many chapters start and end by making reference to that work. The Historia ecclesiastica is not the subject of a chapter in its own right. This is an effective way of demonstrating that the production of the Historia ecclesiastica was intimately connected with every single one of Bede's other intellectual concerns. Although the Cambridge Companion to Bede offers many original insights, its value lies in its ability to digest the developments in Bede studies from the past decade and explain them to a non-specialist audience. Chapters devoted to the reception of Bede in Anglo-Saxon England (Sharon M. Rowley) and continental Europe (Joshua A. Westgard) point towards the concerns that are likely to drive Bede studies forward in the next ten years once a new online database of Bede manuscripts becomes available (http://www.bedemanuscripts.net). These chapters are complemented by an analysis of the cult of Bede (David Rollason) and a discussion of Bede's ‘Englishness’ (Allen J. Frantzen). The book is a welcome addition to the Cambridge Companions to Literature series, being only the second title in that series to be devoted to the Anglo-Saxon period. It is hoped that the publication of this informative collection of essays might inspire the production of similar volumes for other significant ecclesiastical writers from the earlier Middle Ages.