If you love mediaeval illumination, this book is a feast. It covers a huge period, focusing mainly on the 14th and 15th centuries, discussing manuscripts collected together by broad themes: love stories, bestiaries, histories, and the like. In the process it also elaborates the underlying stories, so that the illumination makes sense. A lot of these are intricate and deserving whole books in themselves (which many have had, of course): different manuscripts use different variants of the same underlying myths. I was unfamiliar with most of the detail.

But it’s the illustrations that are the jewels, of course. Westwell works at the British Library, and so has access to one of the world’s largest collections of illuminated manuscripts. The individual letters, borders, and marginal drawings are a complete joy to explore, often with several manuscripts on a common theme set side by side to show the evolution of style and the ways in which the illuminators were thinking about their subjects. Together with the often rude and/or surreal images common to the period, this is a book I will be coming back t time and again.

5/5. Finished Monday 28 April, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)