Simon Keith, Surveying the Domesday Book. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2022, 153 pp.

The Domesday Book is a famous source dating from 1086. It is a two-volume list of estates ( hides and carucatae ) and the resulting taxes due to the king of England. It also mentions the king’s vassals in the various counties and their boroughs, including the king’s lands ( terrae regis ), but also often how or with what it was equipped. The descriptions are at times very detailed. The German Lexikon des Mittelalters notes that the methods used to compile the Domesday Book are still unknown today, and that the speed with which the survey was carried out led to a number of errors (Art. “Domesday Book,” cols 1179–80).