Book excerpt: Liverpool was founded in the Middle Ages, and as the city approaches its eight-hundredth anniversary, this book takes stock of Liverpool’s scholarly contributions to modern understanding of the period. From the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, scholars from Liverpool have made pioneering advances in fields as diverse as Celtic philology and manuscript collecting. By focusing on a local perspective, this volume presents a microcosmic view of the different building blocks of the modern construction of the Middle Ages while offering fresh insights into more universal elements of medieval culture such as pageantry and mystery plays.