The medieval chantry in England is a particularly happy disciplinary marriage of art history, archaeology and the history of religion. The tired existing literature on medieval chantries is greatly enriched by these eleven essays. Framing the collection, McNeill's ‘prehistory of the chantry’ includes an invaluable conspectus of evidence for intercessory masses for named individuals in the early Middle Ages (long before Le Goff's alleged twelfth-century ‘birth of purgatory’), while Phillip Lindley provides a much-needed review of the impact of the dissolution of the English chantries in 1547. The chantry chapel as a distinctive form of micro-architecture was the fourteenth-century creation of bishops and kings, as emerges clearly from the excellent essays by Luxford and Antje Fehrmann. But collectively the authors engage with a wide spectrum of patronage and institutions. If, on the one hand, the ‘stone-cage’ chantry is relatively familiar from such prestigious instances as Bishop William of Wykeham's chapel in Winchester cathedral, and the free-standing memorial chapel, with attached almshouse and school, is splendidly exemplified by the richly-endowed establishment of Thomas and Alice Chaucer at Ewelme, on the other hand, generally humbler foundations by groups of parishioners and members of fraternities employed large numbers of chantry priests and in a significant minority of cases created less durable, semi-enclosed wooden chapels within parochial churches. The balance of tension and complementarity in the relationship between these various endowments and established pastoral structures is not easy to assess. But Cathy Oakes, discussing the two late medieval chapels of Bishop Audley in Hereford and Salisbury cathedrals, shows how in the one case the Marian liturgy of the church was enhanced, while in the other a sculptural setting was provided for the communal drama of the Easter sepulchre. At the level of the parish, Clive Burgess underlines the potential contribution of chantry priests to the regular liturgy of the community. Further clues are given by Kate Heard's paper on related liturgical vestments and hearse-cloths, sewn onto which were the iconographic symbols of diverse spiritual and social allegiances; and by Roger Bowers's essay on the liturgy and music of the chantries: an outstanding element in a volume which can be recommended in its entirety.