This is the first volume of a new five-volume series covering Catholicism in Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to 2021. In sixteen chapters, the editors assemble a distinguished roster of contributors covering a very wide range of relevant topics. The period is approached first in narrative form over five chapters, followed by thematic chapters on Catholics’ relations with the state and their neighbors, martyrdom, the life of male and female religious institutions, material culture, texts, and music. These relatively short chapters sometimes require near-miracles of concision, as, for example, in Katy Gibbons’s coverage of England, Wales, and Ireland under Elizabeth I in seventeen pages.

One aspect of the book which deserves high commendation is that it genuinely lives up to the stated title of covering both Great Britain and Ireland; in some cases the respective nations are divided across separate chapters, but those authors covering wider areas are virtually all scrupulous about offering evidence from Scotland, Ireland, and (perhaps slightly less frequently) Wales as well as England. It is rare to see a work such as this commit so meaningfully to a genre which is often archipelagic in name only, particularly given the depth of the differences in religious history across these nations, and if it sometimes makes for slightly clunky transitions between sections of chapters which need to deal with radically different contexts, it undoubtedly adds richness to the work. Understandably, the evidence does not allow complete equity of coverage, but where necessary multiple chapters or authors are deployed to give sufficient coverage; R. Scott Spurlock’s chapter on “Catholicism on Scotland to 1603” may be particularly fresh and interesting to non-Scottish historians, for example, in his emphasis on the significance of the Scots nobility in fostering Catholicism. Equally, and understandably, there are references to the connections between developments in Great Britain and Ireland and those on the continent at multiple points.

The editors are clear that they have adopted a strict application of the term “Catholic,” “to indicate those individuals who saw themselves as in communion with the pope” (p. xviii). While this is understandable, it is arguably something of a missed opportunity to give so little consideration to the church papists and crypto-Catholics who, often due to their social position, often leave us unsure as to their precise attitude to papal supremacy; only the chapters by Michael Questier and William Sheils give much of a sense of these people.

It would be fair to say that the book focuses considerably more on the “new beginnings” element of its subtitle than on the “endings.” Although the Henrician period is covered briskly by Peter Marshall, the reign of Edward VI’s seems to fall between this chapter and that on Mary I by John Edwards. Most of the meat of the thematic chapters, however, have their centers of gravity in somewhat later periods, for which more evidence survives. Arguably by taking a very thematic approach, some of the chronological picture is lost, which is at times slightly unfortunate, given that, as several contributors note, conditions for Catholics were in almost continual flux over the period, as the attitudes of the authorities shifted according to different monarchs’ approaches, internal politics and foreign relations. Nevertheless, the thematic approach is valuable in helping readers to build up strand-by-strand their sense of the Catholic culture which emerged in this period, its organisation, religious practice, relations with the state and their neighbors, their literature, and so on.

As with most volumes of this kind, this book is likely to serve two main constituencies. For scholars or students seeking a way into an unfamiliar topic, these essays will provide useful starting points and guides to the contours of the subfield, with a generally approachable style and prose. Each essay contains a very short list of further reading, in addition to the footnotes. For those already conversant with the field, there is the promise of fresh examples, case-studies or interesting titbits; the intriguing suggestion in Andrew Cichy’s chapter on music that young women who played keyboard music seem to have tended to stop doing so after they married, for example; the observation by Susanna Brietz Monta and Salvador Ryan that early Irish production of catechisms “suggests a perceived need for basic education in the faith”; or the amusing comparison made by Thomas McCoog between the anticlimactic succession of James I and the millennium bug (this may of course pass over the heads of undergraduate readers). There are also lots of interesting examples of the particular forms which devotion took under circumstances of persecution – worship within the home, worship without the automatic availability of priests, the creation of martyrs and relics in different contexts.

As one would hope from OUP, the volume is very nicely produced and solidly bound, although with a fair few typos, and a disappointingly sketchy index. There are also ten black-and-white illustrations. Taken as a whole, this is an impressive survey of a vibrant field.