This hefty tome comprises fifteen commissioned papers on aspects of the Book of Deer (CUL, Ii.6.32), an Insular illuminated ‘pocket’ gospel book probably originating in tenth-century Scotland (palaeography permits the possibility of a ninth-century date, but is not considered here). The major folios are well reproduced in colour. The introduction discusses the project and its delayed publication, explaining why some papers were not updated to take account of work published over the intervening decade. It would have been helpful to have introduced the manuscript and to have synthesised contributors' conclusions. Sections examine the early medieval gospel book, property records added to it – the earliest extant Scottish Gaelic prose (here edited, transcribed and translated, with discussion of linguistic significance) – and the historical context of Deer (Aberdeenshire), to which they relate. The reader plunges into Thomas O'Loughlin's consideration of the text and fossilised recollection of Eusebian sections. Readers might have found it useful to be told initially that Deer is not a complete gospel book, but comprises excerpted synoptic Gospels, the entire Gospel of St John and a ‘fragmentary’ ritual which Gilbert Márkus shows equipped the book to serve as a portable aid in ministrations to the sick and the dying. His textual comparison of the books of Deer, Dimma, Mulling and the Stowe Missal is instructive, as is discussion of variant approaches in Carolingia and the Celtic lands to the rite of anointing – absent from the book – as a literal cure for sickness or a spiritual preparation for death, respectively. Consideration of the devotional background, embodied in prayerbooks from ninth-century Mercia (which also exerted artistic influences upon Scotland), might have been apt. Isabel Henderson examines the Pictish artistic context and establishes the book's imagery as not just an inexpert, naïve echo of the exegetically-inspired artwork of the great Insular gospel books, but an equally intellectual iconographic response to text. Previous studies by Geddes and Marner warranted greater consideration. Patrick Zutshi's summary of provenance, from documents of David i entered into the book in the second quarter of the twelfth century (linking the book to an earlier local foundation) and grants to the Cistercian house established at Deer in the thirteenth, through Gale in the seventeenth and, via Bishop Moore, to Cambridge in the early eighteenth, includes unpublished notes by Bradshaw. The phonetic orthography of the Gaelic notes leads Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (following Kenneth Jackson) to conclude that, by the twelfth century, a ‘Scottish’ or ‘Scotticised’ orthography had emerged – distinct from Irish practice and perhaps geared to reading aloud. The place of Deer in the early Scottish Church, sculptures from the area and local medieval ecclesiastical history are also examined. By analogy with the Lichfield and Bodmin Gospels, into which documents were entered in Wales and Cornwall during the ninth century, I would suggest that Deer was a ‘book of the high altar’, conferring heightened legality and sacrality upon transactions enacted there. It may have acquired this status through association with an earlier saint who, like Cuthbert (interred with his own little Gospel of John), journeyed to bring succour and solace to those in physical and spiritual need, and may itself have functioned as a relic and instrument of healing. It represents a late but significant contribution to the Insular manuscript corpus, rooted ultimately in Irish (probably expat) soil and speaking eloquently of the Scottish response to that tradition, whether or not it was made in Scotland. If artistic, textual and liturgical practices had become ‘relaxed’, underlying aspirations and functions remained intact.