History of Uppingham By Vivian Anthony Published in 2015 by Uppingham Local History Study Group Softbound - 285 pages – 190 x 246mm Price £20 from local bookshops and Rutland County Museum The author has produced a comprehensive compilation of what is known about the history of Uppingham, and it is useful to have this material collected in a single volume. The author has assimilated the existing secondary material very effectively, but, as he himself acknowledges, there is little in this book which will be new or unfamiliar. The local material is summarised accurately for the most part. The author does, however, sometimes struggle to relate his material to the wider historical context, and there is little attempt to differentiate between vital contextual material and detail which is undeniably superfluous to the tale which the author has to tell. There is some inaccuracy in this wider material. For example, the Venerable Bede, who died in 735, was hardly in a position to comment on the tenth-century restoration of monasticism under King Edgar and Archbishop Duncan, and Henry III reigned for 56 rather than 35 years. The author is on safer ground when discussing developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the book as a whole would have been more useful to readers had it been subjected to more rigorous editing prior to publication. Mike Tillbrook