Covering more than a millennium of the history of the book in Britain, this book deals with a longer period than do all the rest of this series put together. Extending from Roman Britain to the first generation of the Anglo-Norman realm, it embraces both of the two memorable dates in English history. Stretching in bibliographical terms from the Vindolanda Tablets through the Lindisfarne Gospels to the Domesday Book, it includes some of the most famous and fascinating artefacts of written culture ever produced in these isles. The book establishes comparison and contrast between the worlds of books in the main periods such as Roman, pre-Viking, post-Viking, early Norman. The Christian missions from Rome and from Ireland defined the earliest channels for the importation of books to Anglo-Saxon England. Many of the books used in Roman Britain are likely to have been imported from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, arriving via well-organised routes of communication.

Formulae are quoted by Gaius in the Institutes, the only ancient textbook of Roman law to survive entirely, and they show that legal hand books were available in Roman Britain. In Britain four or five hundred stilus writing-tablets have now been found, but few of them are legible. More relevant to the history of the book are three legal documents found in recent years, since they imply the presence of law books and other works of reference. Flavius Cerialis was well educated, despite his Germanic origin, and it is hardly surprising that several scraps of Vergil have now been found at Vindolanda. The first fragment in Vindolanda to be identified was a line from a little-read part of the Aeneid. Pelagius' Latin has been characterised as mostly clear and correct. The preface to Pelagius' Letter to Demetrias conventionally rates content above style, with the engaging image of whole meal bread rather than white.