In two respects, this uneven collection of essays sails under false colours. The miscellaneous character of its contents betrays it as the outcome of an academic conference, yet this can only be confirmed by an unwittingly candid footnote from one contributor (p. 287n.). More seriously, the book claims to be about East Anglia, but is in fact devoted to Norfolk – and in twenty chapters, one of only two on Suffolk subjects consistently and wrongly relocates its subject, the Elveden Estate, to Norfolk (the other, on Lakenheath, presumably creeps in because its parish is within sight of that favoured county). The other East Anglian counties from Cambridgeshire to Essex may be interested to learn (p. 6) that Thetford is ‘the gateway to East Anglia’ rather than being at its geographical centre. One feels that the team of editors from the University of East Anglia in Norwich need to get out more. These annoyances aside, the varied spotlights on Norfolk's religions cover five millennia. The chief excellence is concentrated in the material before the coming of Augustine of Canterbury's Roman mission in 597 ce. Rescue archaeology and metal-detecting have transformed our knowledge on this remoter past, although the evidence still leaves regrettably little to be said about pre-Anglo-Saxon Christianity in Norfolk. Contributors vary in their commitment to exploring any notion of regional character to Norfolk religion, a quest in any case vitiated by the editors’ mistaking of a county for a region. One of the most intelligent essays, a very personal piece by the archaeologist Trevor Ashwin, points out the problem of continuity caused by the constant alterations in a landscape intensely farmed for millennia. The extraordinary array and concentration of medieval ecclesiastical architecture is perhaps Norfolk's chief feature, making for a special long-term local identity, with Norwich on one not altogether implausible reckoning (quoted from Norman Tanner) ‘the most religious city in medieval Europe’ (p. 6). Given that, it is particularly unfortunate that the collection exhibits a yawning gap in coverage from the eighth century to the twelfth, the very period in which the present parochial network took shape. Yet there are some good essays on the high Middle Ages, Suffolk's appearance at Lakenheath sparking Matthew Champion's interesting analysis of the successive wall-painting schemes in the church there, and their possible ramifications in local politics. John Peake provides a valuable discussion of purposefully-clustered ship-graffiti in a group of three north Norfolk seaport churches: their likely function as symbols of thanks or prayer for safe voyages suggests a surviving Transylvanian analogy in the great array of Turkey carpets adorning the walls of the Black Church in Braşov, given as thank-offerings by Lutheran merchants trading in the Ottoman Empire. Nicola Whyte on wayside crosses and Chris King on post-Reformation Norwich give useful perspectives on how the Reformation vigorously reframed Norfolk's devotional culture and liturgical spaces. On the theme of other faiths in a still predominantly Christian landscape, Elizabeth Rutledge gives a crisp overview of medieval Jewish life in Norwich, while the diversifying modern religious scene has brought the paradox of large-scale Sikh pilgrimage to an Anglican country churchyard, paying respects at the grave of the unfortunate Maharajah Duleep Singh at Elveden (I have always savoured the thought of his son, Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, presiding benevolently over not the expanses of the Punjab, but the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society). Modern paganism has superimposed its newly-crafted mythologies on the general muddle-headedness which characterises folk-memory of the past; Robert J. Wallis fascinatingly discusses some resulting conflicts of outlook at major archaeological sites. Please, in a book expounding religious cultures, let us not again have to endure the solecism of ‘the Rev. Elison’ and ‘the Rev. Patten’.