Peter Sherlock's fine new book is distinguished by two main themes from most of its predecessors, amongst which Nigel Llewellyn's Funeral monuments in post-Reformation England (Cambridge 2000) is the most obvious: indeed his book sometimes reads as an extended critique of Llewellyn's work. (My own Tomb destruction & scholarship: medieval monuments in early modern England [Donington 2007], which has some conceptual overlap with Sherlock's study, appeared too late for him to make reference to it). It is Sherlock's reintegration of religious beliefs into the discussion of the period's monuments, and his attentive readings of their inscriptions and meanings, which constitute his major achievements. First, he considers how many members of the early modern nobility certainly had monuments (fewer than half) and how lineage was represented. In chapter ii he turns to the differences between early modern and late medieval effigies, starting with cadaver tombs. Next, he argues that tombs were representations of the dead which must be understood in spiritual as well as physical terms, seeing a shift from the late medieval fear of purgatory to an anticipation of the resurrection confidently based upon the virtues and achievements of the deceased. In a chapter on the Reformation, Sherlock criticises the idea that the dead were now severed from the living, instead maintaining that ‘the dead became exemplars for the living to copy, assured of the resurrection of the body and a place within the church triumphant in heaven, on account of their virtuous deeds and good deaths’ (p. 126). Chapter v, on the Renaissance, considers stylistic changes and the impact of humanist ideals on epitaphs and epigraphy, culminating in a discussion of the figure of ‘Fame’. The sixth chapter, on law and order, meditates on the various reasons for attacks on monuments and convincingly shows that secular causes were important. Chapter vii examines the ways in which monumental commemoration was debated and attitudes to epitaphs expressed, before going on to consider a group of emblematic brasses which manifest sophisticated inter-relationships between texts and images. The final chapter draws together many of the strands of the book in the exploration of a single monument, that to Sir Thomas Gorges and his wife in Salisbury Cathedral, erected in 1635. One or two of Sherlock's formulations grate and some translations are unhappy: for example, ‘luctus monumenta manebunt’ does not mean ‘monuments outlast the cause of grief’ (p. 89) but is a quotation from Ovid's Metamorphoses where Venus states (in the 1567 English translation): ‘Of my greefe remembrance shall remayne [Adonis] whyle the world doth last’, altogether a more poignant and appropriate sentiment. The book's illustrations are of poor quality for an expensive hardback: 1.6 from Dart's Westmonasterium and 2.1 of the Noel monument at Chipping Campden are dreadful. Nevertheless, this is an extremely valuable new addition to work on early modern monuments in England, one which convincingly rediscovers their spiritual dimension.