Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford is built on the site of an Anglo-Saxon monastic church founded by a princess named Frideswide. The princess, a contemporary of the Venerable Bede, has been honoured (and her shrine in the cathedral visited) as the patron saint of Oxford for over a thousand years. This book makes available in English the main accounts of her life.

Dr John Blair, Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford, and advisor on the reconstruction of the shrine on its new site in 2002, has translated the medieval lives of St Frideswide from the Latin. He demonstrates in the introduction that the story, hitherto regarded by historians as a twelfth century invention, probably embodies genuine tradition. The book should have a claim on the affections of all those who love the city, the university and the county of Oxford.

The illustrations, wood engravings by Kathleen Lindsley, depict an episode in the life ot the saint and four of the places associated with her: Christ Church (the cathedral and the reconstructed shrine, above), Binsey, Bampton and the River Thames.