This is a very thoughtful book based on decades of study of this material, but it is much more than a summation of Fernie’s earlier publications. This is a provocative book in the very constructive sense of questioning modes of thought and familiar conventions. Examples range from simply pointing out the different emphasis given by the layout on the page of church plans to the north or to the east, to a thought-provoking new perspective provided by a high-level, aerial view of northern Europe looking south across the North Sea down to the Atlas mountains, which abruptly reverses our ‘normal’ view looking north, and, in so doing, highlights dramatically the importance of maritime interconnections. This questioning of the ways in which historical evidence is analysed and presented is a central theme of Fernie’s magisterial book, in which he stresses the importance of defining terminology and the need to be constantly aware of the assumptions underlying different methodological approaches.

Romanesque as a style is a recognisable manner of building arising within the boundaries of the former Roman empire between c 800 and c 1300, but demonstrates marked regional diversity and thus poses a challenge to historians to identify sufficient common characteristics over that period to justify the over-arching label. Fernie addresses these issues of definition in Part i, dealing first with the historiography of the label ‘Romanesque’, the first such label that refers only to the visual arts rather than to a period as a whole, like Roman, or to a dynasty, like Carolingian. He discusses the emergence of the new manner of building, first within its political and cultural contexts following the collapse of the Roman empire, and then within an architectural context, in order to understand the formation of the various elements that were to characterise the new style.

Part ii is devoted to a narrative history of the style, arranged within three chronological periods: c 800–c 1000; c 1000–c 1150; and c 1150–c 1300. Within each period the discussion is arranged geographically, addressing the regional variations. This constitutes the core of the book in terms of the density of discussion of individual buildings and is the section to which many will turn for Fernie’s views on specific monuments, especially where chronology and stylistic affiliations have been controversial. Within the late phase, he deals with the boundaries of the Romanesque style: in terms of the processes by which it eventually changed to a recognisably Gothic manner, and its geographical limits in relation to the extent of the Latin church, noting that architectural identity may be expressed most strongly near the borders with other cultures.

In Part iii, Fernie approaches the material thematically. Starting with patrons and architects and their role in the formulation of the overall design of individual buildings, he goes on to consider the underlying processes of design and laying out, together with the related discussion of masonry techniques and methods of construction, themes that have been extensively explored in Fernie’s previous publications. More substantial in this book is the discussion of the varied functions of buildings and of the wider question of typology, extending this discussion to include the iconography of architectural forms, and their connotations and associations, as far as possible in terms that would have made sense to contemporaries. This embraces not only the obvious (and, at times, not so obvious) references to iconic exemplars, such as the Holy Sepulchre and St Peter’s, but also signifying elements, such as domes, and the use of architectural features, like spiral columns, to differentiate liturgically distinct parts of a church.

The final section of the book is devoted to research methods and draws together the numerous reflections on the evaluation of the nature of historical evidence and the assumptions that are made in its interpretation. Given the stylistic term in the title of the book, the notion of what constitutes style figures large in this discussion. Here, Fernie defines it as ‘a socially constituted idea comprising the common characteristics of a large number of instances’. In offering his own thoughts, Fernie provides a penetrating, though fair-minded, analysis of previous definitions, and observes that the re-evaluation of style as a means of approaching buildings and artefacts is one of the most important legacies of the new art history. Unquestionably, this is as a major study of the Romanesque style in architecture; it is also a stimulating book for anyone interested in the presentation of architectural history.