Bennett, Stephen, Elite Participation in the Third Crusade (Warfare in History), Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2021; hardback, pp. xiii, 445; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781783275786

Despite the enduring fame of its royal leaders and its importance to the history of crusading and the Latin East, the Third Crusade (1188–92) remains under-studied in modern scholarship. Stephen Bennett’s new monograph on the participation of north-western European elites in this pivotal crusade is one of only a few studies to have treated the subject at length. Based on Bennett’s doctoral dissertation, the book sets out not only to document the extent of participation in the Third Crusade by twelfth-century arms-bearers from the Angevin realm, France, and the Low Countries, but also to illuminate the complex religious, familial, economic, and political factors that influenced individual crusaders’ involvement and contributed to their sense of social and military cohesion as they pursued the ‘superordinate goal’ of recapturing Jerusalem (p. 218).