William of Malmesbury's Gesta pontificum is required reading for anyone working on the ecclesiastical history of the late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman periods. In writing it, William was attempting to bring Bede's Ecclesiastical history, especially book v, chapter 23, up to date, but he was also attempting a sort of Union Catalogue of English Gesta episcoporum. This type of history (Deeds of bishops), which traces the history of a diocese through the lives of its individual bishops, was long established on the continent by William's time but had never developed in England, even though Bede's own Historia abbatum and Alcuin's York poem could have acted as models. William had, unluckily, relatively few narrative sources to draw upon; for most bishops he could supply only their names, preserved in Anglo-Saxon episcopal lists. However, he added brief descriptions of major abbeys and information about saints' cults, and the whole of the fifth book of his work (the idea of having five books was clearly Bedan) was devoted to his own house, Malmesbury, and its most famous inmate, Aldhelm. Hitherto the standard edition of the work has been the one by N. E. S. A. Hamilton for the Rolls Series, which has served readers well for over a century, but which has now been superseded by Michael Winterbottom's work. William's Latin style, which switches effortlessly from the rhetorical flourish to the jokey aside and from the antiquarian dry-as-dust to the cruel put-down (Wulfstan the Homilist, for example, is despatched in half a sentence [p. 380]), would pose problems for most translators, but not for Michael Winterbottom, who rises to the challenge and provides an English version which is readable, indeed often very funny, but at the same time accurate and penetrating. I spotted only one error: on p. 261 Winchester is given for Wigornia. The choice of ‘transferred’ instead of ‘translated’ for the removal of Felix's body (p. 235) seems odd, and ‘inhabitants of the skies’ to render ‘celicolas’ (describing St Peter and St Mary) perhaps needs a more specifically Christian version, such as ‘inhabitants of heaven’ (p. 379), but these are minute quibbles. Since the publication of this volume, volume ii, containing R. M. Thomson's historical commentary, has appeared (2007). The two volumes together will be indispensable to anyone working on twelfth-century English historical writing or on Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical history.