Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship. By Michael G Shapland. 245mm. Pp xviii + 261, 74 b&w figs, 8 tabs. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019. isbn 9780198809463. £85 (hbk).

Abstract

northwards along the fen-edge, which had an exquisite stone shrine with artistic links to Peterborough: did that house another hermit, on whose cult the great minster did in fact lay its hands? The second half of the volume surveys the cult’s somewhat muted post-Conquest development (Licence), the famously imaginative historical writing that surrounded it in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries (Ispir and Sharpe), and its late medieval expressions in the graphic arts, seals, music and architecture (Roberts, Danbury, Heslop, Parkes and Alexander). It ends – poignantly so, given the author’s recent tragic death – with Richard Sharpe’s new and surely definitive edition of the twelfth-century ‘Translation and Miracles’. ‘Expansive’ is the word for this book: the contributors had a generous frame to work in, and everything is here. Occasionally – as when reading about the political background or the setting of Guthlac’s cult for the third or fourth time – one might wish for tougher editing to reduce duplication, but the varied perspectives on the same problems are often interesting. The volume is a monument to Guthlac as magnificent as King Æthelbald’s must have been, and a credit to Shaun Tyas – far more than publisher – whose personal commitment and engagement are obvious throughout.