It is often the case that the culmination of a successful academic career is marked by publication of a Festschrift, a collection of offerings from colleagues and friends that honours, but may not mirror, the recipient's expertise. In the case of B., on the other hand, and coming some seven years after his death, his own academic output stands as a fitting memorial: an edited volume of 63 articles that he produced in the years after his appointment to the Department of Greek at Edinburgh University in 1955. The volume is divided into six sections, the diversity of which illustrates well the great breadth of B.'s interests, which doubtless expanded in line with his teaching commitments. The first centres upon music, understandable in view of his doctoral thesis on the influence that music exerted on Greek life and thought. Following these come four papers on the Pyrrhic dance, fifteen on drama (both tragedy and comedy), thirteen on the world of nature, four on sport and a final, and longest, section of textual discussion on a variety of genres that the editor aptly heads Miscellanea.

Two things stand out in B.'s work. First, is his penchant for textual emendation, something perhaps less in vogue today than was once the case, but the fact that many of his suggestions have found their way into the standard texts (despite R. Dawe's 1965 caveat that the chances of this could stand as low as 0.1%) speaks to the depth of understanding he brought to bear on many of his topics – and his predilection for publication in CQ and CR. More to my own liking were those papers or sections dealing with instances of interpretation.

The second feature of note is the remarkable breadth of B.'s scholarship, indicated time and again by the range of reference and citation – often highly recondite – that he was able to inject into his argument when exploring a topic – and this in the days before the computer and its databases made searches and investigation a less than soul-destroying task. His ability to achieve this is a feature worthy of our admiration, even if at times he is tempted by it to divert into exploration of side-issues.

As a man of his time, B.'s scholarship was always closely argued, and as a result it often demands careful attention from the reader, not least the need for a thorough understanding of the intricacies of which Greek is capable, so this is not a volume for the novice, but it is one that is thoroughly worth investigation.