"it is careful and thorough and will be a useful eye-opener to modern readers of the Bible who are newcomers to this crucial period of rescue and retrieval of late antique and early Christian learning, taking place at the further edges of Europe, with almost empty libraries. Above all, it strives with fair success to take the reader inside the intellectual and spiritual realities of the lives of the monks Adomnan expected to read this book and profit from it in their religious life" ANVIL Vol.25 No.2 2008