In 1506, the most prominent and successful publisher in Paris, Antoine Verard, published a particularly enchanting book of hours. Books of hours were a staple of early publishing, and provided a nicely stable income-stream at a time when so many publishers, so easily, failed and went out of business. Vérard's book of hours, BnF Rés. Vélins 1638, is a charming octavo volume, printed on vellum: the print is a clear and beautiful Gothic black-letter; initial letters have been coloured red and blue; and every page is expensively illustrated with delicate borders and marginal woodcuts. But I want here to draw attention to the frontispiece (fig.1), which shows a magnificent jewelled and enamelled cup held up by two angels, under a canopy whose curtains are held back by two rather smaller angels: a splendid, expensively prepared image of the Grail.

Arthurian romance — all romance — was an object of some disquiet in Renaissance France. Might it not have a degenerative social effect if read by women, children, maidservants? Might not young men, eagerly devouring tales of violence, fall into a violent bellicosity? Might such lighter kinds of reading have social and psychological effects all the more dangerous because they could not easily be distinguished?