This complex and nuanced monograph sheds new light on the history and ideals of the Oxford Movement in two significant ways. First, Pereiro brings to our attention a neglected manuscript in the Borthwick Institute entitled ‘Revival of primitive doctrine’, penned in 1840 by Samuel Wood, brother of the first Lord Halifax. It is the earliest known historical narrative of the movement, predating Perceval's Collection of papers (1842) and Palmer's Narrative of events (1843), and provides a snapshot of the early vision and spirit of the Tractarians before the crisis of Tract ninety and after. Wood's fascinating text, written with the encouragement of Newman and Pusey, is analysed in detail and published in full as an appendix. Second, Pereiro unravels the principle of ethos, attempting to show how this theory of religious knowledge influenced the genesis and development of the movement. He takes Wood's life as ‘a case study of the theory in action’, in which the Tractarian ethos was ‘incarnate in a person’ (p. 5). The concept was originally coined by Keble, and enlarged upon by Froude and Newman, though they never defined it clearly or systematically and therefore it emerges in a jumbled-up way from their private correspondence more than their publications. Pereiro seeks order amongst these confused fragments and demonstrates that ethos played a major role in the background to Newman's theory of doctrinal development, and in Tractarian attitudes to the English Reformation and Anglican identity. The central importance of ethos to the Oxford Movement is universally recognised, but historians have usually avoided the subject. We therefore owe Pereiro thanks for the historical precision and theological insight he brings to bear on this tortuous terrain.