A subtle shift occurred between 1903, when Baldwin Brown published the first volume of Arts in Early England, and 1938, when Thomas Kendrick’s Anglo-Saxon Art appeared: the former implies tradecraft, the latter aesthetics. Although Kendrick’s theme was the contrast between barbarian and classical styles, value judgements abounded. Subsequent titles have followed Kendrick’s precedent, and Sonja Marzinzik, a former curator at the British Museum, provides its latest manifestation.

Handbooks that are based on single museum collections, even one as wide-ranging as the British Museum’s, are difficult to compose. The target audience is not the academic specialist, but visitors whose interest can be aroused. Although the former must not be able to find faults, the latter need to have their attention held – how much explanation and context can the author-curator give, and how can readers’ questions be anticipated? If only the objects themselves can be illustrated, how can manufacturing techniques be explained? Can the political, religious and economic contexts of an artefact be established while still drawing attention to its details? Would readers tolerate drawings and x-ray images, and would they want to understand more about the methods of analysis that can now be applied? How can a critical reappraisal of a well-known object be presented within a limited space?

Another issue for an author-curator is having to work with a designer, whose values are less likely to be educational. In this case, little deviation from a set format looks as if it was permitted – a short text with a whole-page picture for each object. The text page is sometimes allowed to have another picture on it, such as front and back views, but the text is never run over to another leaf, and rarely describes more than a single object. Overall, this works well enough, as the text is authoritative and the illustrations are superb, showing three-dimensional depth particularly well. A few pieces, however, such as coins, are not flattered by the degree to which they are magnified.

The geographical range covered is admirably wide. Each of the six sections has a useful two-page introduction, although the maps that are grouped at the back would have been more useful with the texts. These gestures towards explanation of the period’s ‘cultures’ are not supported by illustrations of anything that cannot be treated as ‘art’; even the sole potsherd allowed entry is a highly glazed and decorated piece (and is attributed to the second half of the twelfth century, one of a few that stretch the definition of ‘early’ medieval beyond most definitions).

The individual objects will mostly be familiar to specialists, partly through the series of splendid international exhibitions held in the 1980s and 1990s, sadly now remembered only by the more elderly among us; such treats are beyond the reach of the Age of Austerity. Marzinzik’s commentaries often refer to those exhibitions’ catalogues, although the format of the handbook allows for only a single piece of ‘further reading’ for each object – grouped at the back, these would surely have been more usefully included on the same page as the object. One consequence of this lack of direct referencing is that it is hard to know where the author’s own ideas begin. I read the discussion of the ship’s figure-head from the River Scheldt as being a total re-dating of the object from radiocarbon, but in fact its pre-Viking origin was argued long ago by Rupert Bruce-Mitford; Marzinzik’s own contribution is, I think, to compare its chip-carving to other late Roman and early post-Roman work.

Bright Lights in the Dark Ages catalogues a private collection acquired by the publishing museum. Unfortunately no provenance is given for any of the pieces, except which dealers’ hands they have passed through. They are unlikely all to be old discoveries made before international efforts to discourage looting and smuggling were introduced, so it is inappropriate to review the book any further in this journal.