The anonymous author of a collection of 127 miscellaneous Quaestiones and of commentaries on the Pauline Epistles generally known under the name of Ambrosiaster, apparently given him by the Benedictine editors of St Maur (not, the author of this book tells us, by Erasmus, as is often said) has not been as much studied as the interest of his works would deserve. In recent years he has been drawn into the lively discussions surrounding the ascetic movement and its critics – being an interesting representative of the latter. Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe's book is a welcome addition to the literature, concerning itself with his views on a wider front. Her book is in two parts: the first is a general study of his identity, his background and his writings. In a sane discussion of attempts to identify him, perhaps as a convert from paganism or from Judaism, the author dismisses these inconclusive speculations as futile, remarking, incidentally and rightly, on the fluidity of the boundaries between paganism, Judaism and Christianity in the 380s. She adopts the now generally held view that he was a Roman presbyter, writing in the mid-380s. The second half of the book is devoted, more specifically, to the Ambrosiaster's political theology, understood as ‘a way of describing the interaction of political and theological thinking’. All his thought, whether in his exegetical, homiletic or polemical modes, circles around the ‘intended hierarchy and singularity of God's creation, and the cosmic and scriptural need for developing and preserving a monarchical ruling principle in social relations, the church and political society’. The author is sometimes perhaps over-generous to the Ambrosiaster in interpreting his often muddled writings, endowing them with a coherence that is more hers than his; but this is, after all, a laudable failing in what is a useful and sympathetic exposition of a neglected body of work.