Over half of this volume (pp. 16–166) consists of a single study (in effect a monograph) by Simon Keynes. A comprehensive reassessment of Anglo-Saxon royal charters, his ‘Church councils, royal assemblies and Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas’ works thoughtfully through many of the cruces of Anglo-Saxon royal diplomatic. Of greatest relevance to readers of this Journal are its considered assessments of the nature of Church involvement in the origin and development of the diploma, and of the extent of ecclesiastical participation in the production of royal charters in the tenth century. In the latter case, Keynes persuasively sketches a fluid model in which the royal secretariat, itself a protean body, was sometimes supplemented, occasionally supplanted, by ecclesiastical agencies. One can only lament the paucity of surviving ‘original’ charters (as opposed to later cartulary copies) which could have shed further light on the relationships between court and church bureaucracies in the period and hence, by extension, on the interpenetration of Church and State more generally. The general introduction to Kingship, legislation and power and the other six articles that it contains, whatever their intrinsic merits, inevitably seem slight by comparison. Alexander Rumble urges against underestimating the extent of Anglo-Saxon bureaucracy; Carol Hough suggests that place-names including ‘king’ may reflect land forfeited to the crown; Andrew Rabin explores what Anglo-Saxon law reveals about notions of self; Ryan Lavelle demonstrates that the render required by a law of King Ine would have represented a considerable burden; and Alaric Trousdale makes a case that the mid-tenth century (the era of King Edmund and Archbishop Oda) was a watershed in the delegation of royal authority. The only one of these chapters of particular relevance to ecclesiastical history is that of Barbara Yorke, who surveys changing patterns of royal burial across the Anglo-Saxon period as a whole. Yet, as Keynes's contribution bestrides the book like a colossus, it is this that will determine whether individuals, as opposed to institutions, will acquire it. Since his study will surely become a standard introduction to Anglo-Saxon royal diplomatic, it is perhaps regrettable that it did not appear as a mini-monograph, akin to Stenton's compact The Latin charters of the Anglo-Saxon period (Oxford 1955), which would then, presumably, have been more affordable and could have had more numerous (and clearer) plates.