This is a fine example of the vogue for large-scale histories of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. St John's was founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry vii, posthumously in 1511. The effective founder was John Fisher, bishop of Rochester. His origins in Beverley were reflected in an institutional bias towards the north of England. The college navigated successfully, and not dishonourably, the trial and execution of Fisher and its regional association with the Pilgrimage of Grace. (Nicholas Metcalfe, Master since 1518, forced to resign in 1537, seems to deserve the credit.) The period of ‘St John's Humanism’ between 1535 and 1546 (the foundation of neighbouring Trinity College) produced a Protestant orientation so that a remarkable quarter of the ‘Cambridge Connection’ exiles under Mary i were from the college. Through much of Elizabeth's reign it had a Puritan atmosphere. Inevitably ecclesiastical issues got entangled with charges and countercharges about corruption and mismanagement. Willam Whittaker, Master 1587–95 (effectively Cecil's nominee) was denounced by a group of Fellows for countenancing (apparently) a ‘national synod’ of committed Presbyterians being held in the college in 1590. He was also the principal drafter of the ‘essentially Calvinist’ Lambeth Articles of 1595. Thereafter there was little that was particularly distinctive about the college's ecclesiastical history, except for its contributing no fewer than sixty-four of the 394 non-jurors. Even the controversy about the building of the new chapel (1860s) was aesthetic and practical; it proved too large, given the simultaneous relaxation of the enforcement of compulsory attendance. An interesting Nonconformist set of Fellows kept up a guerrilla war against its choral liturgy. Later there was successful opposition to any association with Fisher's canonisation in 1935. By 1985, however, the college invited Cardinal Hume to commemorate the 450th anniversary of Fisher's martyrdom.

The history is obviously designed for the college's quincentenary, with a clear target of an alumni readership. Other than the (no doubt unavoidable) pious platitudes by the present Master in his foreword (nicely balanced by Peter Linehan's ironic preface), it avoids the traps of the genre. Richard Rex, for the sixteenth century, Derek Beales for the eighteenth, Boyd Hilton for the nineteenth, appear to have no institutional link with St John's, and write with the skill and detachment to be expected of such distinguished practitioners. Mark Nicholls is intriguing on the seventeenth century. He has a good eye for the practical question, such as water supply, or the question (much more difficult than might appear) of what Fellows were actually paid. Derek Beales notes that only one eighteenth-century Master (a life appointment) died without serious physical or mental impairment; that is also true of my own college in the nineteenth century, and might be taken on board by those campaigning today against a compulsory retirement age. The editor, with contributions by Peter Hennessy, both Johnians, writes about the twentieth century with a sardonic exuberance, whether on college officers or students; if at times with too much detail about the tortuous process of coming to terms with, for instance, women as guests or visitors, let alone members of the college. There are excellent statistical appendices on social origins, types of school, examination performance and careers. It is perhaps difficult yet to set the 1950s and 1960s in historical perspective. Attitudes on admissions, gender relations, class etc. which fail to measure up to contemporary ideas of correctness seem either repugnant or comic, rather than meriting explication in historical context. One fears for one's own hostages to fortune.

One characteristic of college histories is the dearth of information about actual teaching and learning; pupil contact, what actually went on in lectures, classes, supervisions. This is an archival problem, the tendency to take teaching for granted, without any need for formal records, in contrast to the serious business of land-management. Even so, some indication of what was expected, at least in theory, of students in the recent past in different subjects, the allocation of their time as between lectures, preparation for supervisions, lab work, where applicable, would have been useful. St John's seems to have a remarkable collection of admission and disciplinary records from the nineteenth century; one senses behind the authored chapters the input of Malcolm Underwood, the college's archivist. It seems possible, for instance, to document future Victorian incumbents in trouble for consorting with ladies of the town. (A future source for the Clergy of the Church of England Database?) But the bulk of the book is inevitably about higher college politics; the election of Masters, their difficulties with the Seniors (the inner ring which, rather than the fellowship as a whole, ran the college), the attitudes of tutors and bursars. To those of us with a Trollopian taste for the political game waged by clever people in a closed environment this is all very entertaining, but perhaps not of general historical interest. The book wisely steers clear of celebrating or even recording famous names associated with the college, perhaps because of the extraordinary number which could be mustered; statesmen (Palmerston), poets (Wordsworth), campaigners (Clarkson, Wilberforce), economists (Marshall), Nobel-laureate scientists (Dirac, Cockcroft), or even the notorious (Titus Oates). An astonishing 2 per cent of the entries in the ODNB are of Johnians.

Does the book justify extended notice in this Journal? Ecclesiastical controversy took place on a university rather than a college stage, and is best pursued in such works as Peter Lake's Moderate Puritans (1982) or the four-volume History of the University of Cambridge (1988–2004) under the general editorship of Christopher Brooke. A better justification might be the very size of St John's, the largest or second-largest college in Cambridge for most of its time. Until about 1900 a majority, sometimes a large majority, of its graduates took orders in the Church of England and for the most part served the parochial ministry. Given the absence of specific ministerial training or seminary experience until Victorian times, or even then for the majority of ordinands, an examination of an institution in which clergy spent their impressionable years is a contribution to English (and indeed imperial) ecclesiastical history. Boyd Hilton makes a pertinent point about the ‘galvanizing effect’ of the Crimean War on ‘colonial mission and muscular Christianity’; perhaps as significant in its way as more well trodden themes such as the Evangelical or Tractarian movements, and nicely illuminated in the context of the college's history.