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Medieval Dublin: the making of a metropolis. Edited by Howard Clarke. Pp 313, illus., maps. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 1990. IR£24.50.Medieval Dublin: the living city. Edited by Howard Clarke. Pp 241, illus., maps. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 1990. IR£24.50.

THE publication of these companion volumes has been assisted financially by the residue of funds of the Associates of the Friends of Medieval Dublin in pursuance of their policy of diffusing knowledge of Dublin's medieval past. Together these two volumes contain twentyeight previously published articles on medieval Dublin which have been selected by the editor under four headings: historical and topographical developments; buildings and monuments (contained in the volume subtitled The making of a metropolis); religious life and institutions; and secular life and institutions (contained in The living city). The articles range in date of writing from 1890 to 1982. They have been reprinted with some additional and corrective material, updated bibliographical references and some new illustrations. Each volume contains an identical introduction by the editor which aims to provide an historiographical context for the twenty-eight essays. The volume subtitled The making of a metropolis broadly contains more recent scholarship, including an article first published in German by Anngret Simms and here translated into English, as well as contributions by Howard Clarke, Breandan O Riordain, Roger Stalley and Patrick Wallace, while The living city chiefly reprints work of earlier generations of scholars. Patrick Wallace's contribution, 'The origins of medieval Dublin', is the only article which has been extensively rewritten and expanded; it develops in more detail his thesis that tenth-century Dublin should be clearly distinguished from the ninth-century longphort and that both the historical context and the archaeological parallels suggest that Anglo-Saxon models were more important than Scandinavian influences in the origins of the tenth-century settlement. Parallels for its defensive and topographical layout should be sought, not in Scandinavian towns, such as Haitabu or Birka as had earlier been suggested, but rather in England, since it was 'saxonised Norsemen' who returned from England to refound Dublin in 917. In England an 'urban revolution', in the form of West Saxon and Mercian burh construction, had taken place, and it was Anglo-Saxon models, therefore, which provided the most important formative influences of tenth-century Dublin. While Howard Clarke has drawn attention to the 'Irish dimension' in the evolution of Dublin, detailing two distinct Irish settlements at Ath Cliath and at Dubhlinn which predated the establishment of the Scandinavian longphort, or fortified ship harbour, in 841, Wallace argues for the predominance of a ' British dimension', emphasising that the archaeological evidence to date does not demonstrate continuity between either the pre-Viking Irish settlements or the ninth-century military longphort and the refounded tenth-century Norse urban settlement.