The Prayer Book crisis of 1927–8 remains a defining episode in the history of Church–State relations in modern England. The House of Commons' rejection of the book crafted uncertainly after years of ecclesiastical conflict exposed the fragility of the legislative autonomy that the Church of England had sought to establish through the Enabling Act of 1919 and the creation of the Church Assembly, and made further steps towards real legislative independence for the Church almost inevitable. Donald Gray's succinct discussion of the background to the crisis lays bare the compromised and contested nature of the text that emerged from the tangle of experimental orders stemming ultimately from the establishment of a Royal Commission on Ritual in 1904. The author's familiarity with liturgical history is evident in the attention he pays to the finer points of sacramental theology that lay behind apparently minor textual variants, and in his appreciation of the complexity of the process of Prayer Book revision. This is the real strength of these short and readable volumes. They are based on a thorough survey of the relevant drafts, correspondence and parliamentary papers. The unexpected hostility the compromise text encountered in the Commons in fact merely exposed the unsatisfactory nature of many of the key liturgical decisions made by its drafters. Perhaps somewhat in opposition to other scholars, Gray implies that the crisis was in that sense a blessing in disguise for the Church. In other respects, readers already knowledgeable in the field will find little new here. There are other, and fuller, accounts of the implications of the crisis for Church–State relations, and so Gray's work is likely to be most useful as a complementary account to the work of scholars such as Ian Machin, Adrian Hastings and Matthew Grimley.