This is the first volume in a new series from Ashgate that has been developed in association with the Lambeth Palace Library archives. Two others have been published on Geoffrey Fisher and the trio Ralph d'Escures, William of Corbell and Theobald of Bec. This second volume covers the archbishops between Anselm and Beckett and thus shows the different scene that Beckett confronted when he became archbishop.

In each volume the combination of narrative and extensive texts means that it can be very profitably used as a textbook. The present book thus falls into two parts, a narrative of Anselm's archiepiscopate and a collection of illustrative sources including Anselm's letters from the collection Lambeth 59. There is a very useful chapter-length Introduction in which Vaughn sets out the historiographical background, the changing portrait of Anselm particularly in the writings of Richard Southern and Robert Cantor. She also sets out the various sources for a life of Anselm, particularly the biographies of Anselm's secretary Eadmer and she also restores the value of the work of William of Malmesbury. This affects her judgment on the work of Robert Cantor. Anselm's letters figure largely in the treatment of Anselm given here. She sets out to clarify and elaborate her earlier argument with Richard Southern as to Anselm's political and administrative effectiveness. This is set in the context of a missionary tradition in Bec directed in the first instance to Normandy, but also to England even before the time of the Conquest.

Anselm's theological writings are neatly set within this documentary story of Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the discussion of the English investiture controversy generally anachronistic categories such as church and state are avoided. Rather than presenting the controversy in terms of a struggle between the king and the papacy she represents it as ‘a three-way struggle between king, pope, and primate over the rights and powers of each against the claims of the other two participants’, Thus she says ‘Anselm had a view of himself as possessing certain primatial powers, independent of the papacy, that constituted him as Patriarch of another world’. That other world spread all over the British Isles even including the Orkneys and with some influence in Normandy. These were achievements that gave to the Archbishop of Canterbury significant independence from papal power.

All of this is presented in short compass and with detailed attention to the different and often conflicting tendencies in the sources. One of the great benefits of this book as a textbook is that it provides a masterclass of how to work with a set of different sources in relation to a common theme. Then to have a judicious selection of sources included in the book means that this is not just a significant contribution to Anselm study but also a model of how a textbook might be constructed.

This is an outstanding achievement to which scholars and researchers can turn with great profit and in which students can labour and find themselves experiencing a substantial historical training.