As the subtitle to this book should make plain, between high points of storm or stress, group biographies of the archbishops of Canterbury are obliged to traverse periods of unheroic routine. The last attempt to write a full history of the archbishops, Walter Farquhar Hook's Lives, published in twelve volumes after 1860, got no further than Archbishop Juxon (d.1663). The curse rather than the solace of its author's old age, it ranks perhaps as the least-read of Victorian historical epics, certainly as one of the dullest. In a series intended to offer a modern alternative to Hook, Jean Truax makes the best of a difficult task, breathing if not a gale then a gentle breeze into what, in Canterbury's history, are generally viewed as the doldrums of the early twelfth century. Inevitably, given the source materials, jurisdictional disputes take precedence over personalities. This is generally seen as a period of scene-setting, in which relations between the English Church and the papacy slowly came into focus. With the pope's connivance, Ralph of Escures was outwitted by Thurstan of York in the battle over primacy. No sooner had this dispute been settled than William of Corbeil became embroiled in the disputes over Thurstan's insistence on having his cross carried before him throughout England. Theobald's archiepiscopate, here treated in brief outline when compared to the still classic study by Avrom Saltman, was marked by a great increase in appeals to the archbishop to serve as arbiter and guarantor of judicial settlements. Truax has few original observations to make about such developments. Her strength lies instead in her judicious balancing of extremes, not least in her negotiation of the still choppy waters that divide the opinions of Richard Southern from those of Sally Vaughn (Truax's own former supervisor). In a series of appendices she offers English translations from primary sources, and a useful summary of the scholarly state of play to accompany a reprinted version of Michael Winterbottom's translation of the Canterbury forgeries. There are some minor omissions (Edmund King on the authorship of the Gesta Stephani) and misunderstandings (p.165, where ‘Guido de Pressenni’ is identified as an Italian name, when it is more likely French ‘Guy de Pressigny’). Cistercian houses were generally planned to house apostolic communities of twelve or twenty-four monks (not thirty as stated at p.160). To suggest (p.176) that any twelfth-century king of England refrained from interference in episcopal elections is to ignore the evidence, most recently and coherently assembled by Anne Duggan, that all episcopal elections were in effect royal nominations, the sole and significant exception here being elections to Canterbury. As a contribution to what is intended to be a comprehensive group biography, this is an entirely competent affair. As a history of the English Church from Anselm to Becket, it can be read as a useful supplement to the far more distinguished work of Zachary Brooke, Frank Barlow, Richard Southern and Martin Brett.