This collection of studies is the result of a conference held in March 2010 at the University of York with the title ‘York 1190: Jews and others in the Wake of Massacre’. This traumatic historical event has often been described within the framework of Jewish historiography as a result of which York has become a synonym for anti-Jewish atrocity in the Middle Ages, a ‘Yorkshire Masada’, as one of the contributors phrased it. New insights and approaches (in addition to Barrie Dobson's acclaimed publication in 1974) show that the York massacre was neither an isolated nor merely a local event. The essays in this volume contribute new materials and interpretations, and include questions of narrative and memory, grouped here under three headings: the events of 1190 and their contexts; Jewish communities among Christians in England; and representations of Jews in text, image and memory. Social, financial, governmental, theological and literary contexts are explored, thereby putting anti-Jewish violence and the broader challenge of Jews living among Christians at the heart of the society and history of Angevin England. A number of essays stress the very live question of royal authority at this time: its necessity, its heavy-handedness, the identity and the power of its agents and what this meant for those who lived, day by day, under its constraints. Other studies reflect on the works of the medieval historian William of Newburgh (see his History of English affairs, bk iv, chs ix–xi), challenging his views and ideas about the violence of 1189/90. Altogether, the essays in this collection stress the complex role of Jews who were defined by their occupations and their faith in a world that was in one sense routinely multicultural, but otherwise largely Christian in every aspect of life. This volume is an indispensable addition to a better understanding of a horrific event that sat at the core of Anglo-Christian as well as Anglo-Jewish medieval history.