Professor Roderick Marshall lived in Morris’s house, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, for seven years from 1968 to 1975 and will be remembered with affection by the many members of the William Morris Society whom he entertained there and with whom he shared his vast knowledge not only of Morris but of Eastern philosophies. This splendidly produced book is a labour of love, having been seen through the press by Professor Marshall’s widow, Professor Margaret Wiley Marshall. It would, therefore, be unjust to complain to anyone except the publisher that the index to such a thoughtful and immensely detailed work should be so totally inadequate: only one page to cover a closely written book of 315 pages.

Before going to live at Kelmscott Professor Marshall had spent two years in the East and, indeed, over two decades had been an expert on Indian, Chinese and Muslim subjects on which he had written articles for the Encyclopedia Americana and it was doubtless this accumulated knowledge of Eastern philosophies