This landmark translation of Ouyang Xiu's influential Song dynasty (960–1276) version of Five Dynasties (907–960) history has now been issued in paperback, making it accessible as an undergraduate purchase for topics in historiography, Song culture and – with due caution – as a primary source for Five Dynasties history. It remains important to amplify Davis's point that this work tells us more about the Song than about the Five Dynasties.

Davis estimates that he has translated some two-thirds of the original, including all of the annalistic material and, comprising the largest part of the text, unabridged renditions of many of the biographies, favouring the longer and more detailed narratives, and seeking a balanced representation, across the five regimes, that did not concern Ouyang Xiu. Davis does not note the names of those whose biographies have been omitted. He has not translated at all the biographies in the “Consistent conduct” chapter, Ouyang's two treatises (on astronomy and administrative geography), the timeline for the ruling houses of the Ten Kingdoms which mostly ruled south of the River Huai, or the Appendices on the Four Barbarians, which Davis feels “do not lend themselves to translation”. Specialists may particularly feel the absence of the first and last items on this list, which alters the overall balance of the text.

The elegant translation captures the flavour of the “ancient” style that helped to make this history distinctive in its own time. The judicious fifty-page introduction attends to Ouyang's methods and motivation, surveys Five Dynasties history, locates the Five Dynasties in relation to their non-Chinese neighbours, and considers Ouyang's Confucian moral stance.