Anyone who has studied the Tudor period in any depth recognises the importance and prominence of the Howards, dukes of Norfolk, and their immediate family. This edited volume gives an excellent presentation of not only the Howards’ relationship with the Crown, but also within the wider community, by exploring tomb-monuments. The material covered stems from a project that examined the ‘historical, archaeological and art-historical backgrounds of the monuments of Thomas Howard, the third of the Howard Dukes of Norfolk and his wife, and that of Henry Duke of Richmond and Somerset and his wife at Framlingham in Suffolk’ (p vii). The volume contains eight chapters as well as an introduction and a helpful index. The interdisciplinary as well as cross-disciplinary ambition of the project is clearly reflected within the volume with contributions from historians, archaeologists, art historians and scientists. The first chapter, ‘The Tudors and the Howards’, gives an excellent historical overview of the Howard family’s relationship with the Tudor monarchs, starting at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Steven Gunn and Kirsten Claiden-Yardley take the reader on a journey of treason, recovery, loyalty, executions and yet more recoveries by the family. The essay makes clear the influence of members of the Howard family at the Tudor court, on the battlefield and in East Anglia.

The subsequent essays apply a variety of approaches and depth of analysis. While the volume mainly focuses on the Howard family during the Tudor period, many of the chapters offer ample historical background for a reader who is unfamiliar with the family’s history. This allows for a very well-rounded picture, especially of Thetford Priory, a site that features heavily in many of the papers. The second essay, ‘Thetford Priory: patronage, burial, buildings, dissolution’ (pp 20–33), is a case in point. Jackie Hall discusses the priory from its foundation by Roger Bigod in 1103 or 1104 and the building’s successive use by the Howards throughout the Middle Ages and the Tudor period up until the dissolution of the priory in 1540. Just as Gunn and Claiden-Yardley’s article helps the reader situate the Howard family in the wider historical context, so too does Hall’s article for Thetford Priory.

The third chapter, again by Claiden-Yardley, offers a general overview of Tudor noble funerals with a specific case study of that of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk, arguing that the funerals of the elite reflected both aristocratic values and the prevailing religious beliefs of the sixteenth century.

By far the longest paper in the volume is Phillip Lindley’s ‘Materiality, Movement and the Historical Moment’ (pp 43–75), which discusses the events of the mid-sixteenth century and their relationship to the tomb-monuments of the Howard family standing in the parish church of St Michael in Framlingham. Towards the end of the chapter, Lindley explores antiquarian and later historians’ descriptions of these tomb-monuments in order to re-evaluate and bring in new evidence from 3D laser scans along with the analysis of some fragmented pieces housed with English Heritage and the British Museum.

Many of the papers provide the reader with new and exciting finds related to the Howard monuments; for the reviewer, the most interesting is Kirsten Claiden-Yardley’s third contribution to the volume: ‘The 1546 Declaration Regarding the Arms at Thetford Priory’ (pp 76–80), which offers a brief discussion of the 1546 declaration, but also includes a transcription of the declaration found in The National Archives SP 1/227, f. 128. The sixth chapter ‘The Missing Link? The Duke of Norfolk’s travels and French Renaissance tomb sculpture’ by Rebecca Constabel, explores the third Duke of Norfolk’s trips to France. This helps place his tomb-monument in a wider European context and makes interesting connections of artistic and cultural influences that cross borders and kingdoms. The penultimate article, written by the late George Fraser and Nishad Karim (both of the Space Research Centre at the University of Leicester) discusses the scientific side of the project, giving a recap of the technology and mathematics behind the scans of the monuments, hinting that collaborations of this type can be extremely fruitful. The final essay in the volume, ‘The Surrey Tomb at Framlingham: the visual resurrection of a reputation’, examines the posthumously constructed tomb-monument of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and his wife, Frances de Vere, in the Church of St Michael in Framlingham. In short, each author brings a different component and approach to the data collected from the project, giving the reader a view of the Howard family from a variety of angles. Meanwhile, the colour images are fantastic. They are beautifully printed and add a real sense of depth for the reader.

The overall approach of this volume is extremely exciting. By examining a family’s influence, prestige and importance through their monuments, the analysis of material culture is brought to the forefront of the study of familial history. On top of this, the added element of 3D scans and X-ray images has proven to be a productive endeavour. However, although the volume’s aim, according to the introduction, was to focus on both the men and women of the Howard family, it falls short on discussing the importance of the monuments of the women of the family, with mentions of them simply in passing. The prominent focus on the men only tells half the story, leaving some interesting questions on women’s memory and commemoration unanswered. Not all contributions provide ample references, something that a reader may find frustrating and, while it is clear why all the contributions were featured, some readers might find it difficult to understand the organisation of the contents as well as draw wider conclusions from the book. Yet, despite these minor flaws, the volume offers new insights into the Howard family during the Tudor period and offers exciting possibilities to scholars who wish to work across a variety of disciplines in order to shed light on the past. Thus, it fulfils its promise, demonstrating a fruitful marriage between history, heritage and science.