Fergus D'Arcy has brought his skilled historian's pen and a vast array of sources to bear on illuminating a nineteenth-century Irish Carmelite friar. John Spratt's name has been kept alive by his Carmelite brethren, not least by the monastery in Whitefriar Street in Dublin which he helped to found and which was opened in 1827 on a site occupied by a pre-Reformation Carmelite friary. There have been four previous biographies of Spratt, of various length and quality, but D'Arcy's is by far the best.

Spratt's life and work well instantiates the idea sic transit gloria mundi since although widely known and venerated in his own life time – 30,000 people joined the cortège at his funeral to Glasnevin – he was all but forgotten within a few years of his death. He entered the Carmelites at a time when the fortunes of the order in Ireland were at a low ebb. This was partly because of the after effects of the penal laws and because of restrictions the Holy See had placed on the recruitment of Irish friars in the eighteenth century. Spratt was sent to Spain for his early formation and theological study. It says much of him that despite the ravages experienced by the Catholic church in that country from various revolutionary groups he remained a political liberal all his life.

The range and intensity of Spratt's commitment to charitable activities from the time he arrived back in Ireland in 1821 until his death in 1871, at the age of seventy-five, was truly astonishing. There was hardly an aspect of the life of Dublin that he did not touch, from poor schools to a night refuge for orphans and widows. He was also to the fore in relief work during the Famine. Perhaps his most consistent work for the alleviation of misery was the temperance movement, but his labour in this regard was overshadowed by that of Fr Theobald Mathew. They quarrelled over the fact that Spratt insisted that temperance must be an interdenominational movement, whereas Mathew was anxious to keep the hierarchy of the Catholic church on board. It is said that in the years between 1843 and 1846 Spratt administered the pledge to some 160,000 individuals. He was also involved in a long drawn-out but ultimately successful campaign to end the annual August Donnybrook Fair which was regarded a ‘great national nuisance’.

Spratt was clearly among the most ecumenically sensitive Catholic priests working in Ireland in the middle decades of the century. Such was his concern to engage in charitable work with clergy of other denominations that when he died William Carroll, his longtime friend and a Church of Ireland pastor, could say of him that Spratt was a shining light in Ireland and more surprisingly that ‘as surely as I believe in God, I believe his religion is as saving a religion as mine’ (p. 509). This was an extraordinary testimony given the religious hostilities in the Ireland of the time. His friendship across the sectarian divide was sustained despite his commitment to nationalist politics. A fervent supporter of O'Connell's Repeal Association, he also campaigned for the reprieve of those condemned to death for their part in the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848. He was not, however, of advanced nationalist sentiments and wanted Ireland to retain its links with the Crown.

In addition to his public life Spratt was engaged in the normal round of priestly work. He was undoubtedly the best-known Irish Carmelite of his generation and rendered service to his own order in a number of important positions. He was reappointed prior provincial in 1863, a position he held until his death. This is not to say he was an easy person to live with; he was self-opinionated, somewhat egotistical and was both severe and authoritarian in his dealing with his fellow religious. There were several petitions to Rome about his conduct of the affairs of the order and complaints that he spent too much time on matters of public interest to the neglect of the affairs of the Irish Carmelites.

The work is saved from provincialism by D'Arcy's ability to construct from Spratt's life a splendid history of the social life of Dublin and Ireland in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. There are excellent sections on the Charitable Bequests Act (1844), Irish education at its various levels, and Fenianism. The work is perhaps a bit too long. The production values are excellent although the index might have been somewhat more comprehensive.