Ten chapters and a brief epilogue comprehensively and minutely survey the material and documentary evidence for the physical settings of medieval shrines from their Anglo-Saxon origins to the Reformation and beyond. Chapter i is a lucid introduction to all the elements comprising the cult of saints' relics in the medieval West, including practices and principles of pars pro toto, of translation and fragmentation, of incorruptibility, of the contexts of distribution and containment of relics, the production of secondary relics, burial ad sanctum, and pilgrimage, compellingly establishing the cult of saints as the ‘unashamedly physical affair’ promised in the brief introduction and relentlessly demonstrated throughout the book. Chapter ii provides an instructive survey of the continental context out of which English practices in large part emerged in the early Anglo-Saxon period. Chapters iii–ix divide the medieval English period into convenient phases within which developments in shrine building are surveyed. For all of the known English shrine locations of the age (presented in a map on p. xxiv) Crook brings to bear his unrivalled knowledge of the architectural documentary, and pictorial material for their physical settings, the forms that they took, the materials used and the trends that they illustrate. Innovations and their dissemination are traced through particular people, places and events, demonstrating the common themes, trends and frequent eccentricities found in each phase. The care taken to provide exact interpretations of the evidence for particular historically-situated physical settings is masterly and shows an immense authority at work in matters of antiquarian, architectural and philological knowledge (a glossary and modestly entitled ‘select bibliography’ are two further useful contributions for historians). Readers might not wish to read the book from cover to cover such is its exhaustive pursuit of detail. But for local historians and for those interested in the history of particular religious institutions this is an invaluable and, thanks to the topographical and thematic headings within each chapter and footnoted cross-referencing between the historical phases of certain key institutions, easily navigable and authoritative reference work that I doubt will be surpassed.