This is a bold enterprise and it marks an important achievement in scholarship. Keith Robbins has for some years insisted on the importance of thinking of the regional manifestations of Christian history in the British Isles on their own distinct terms. This may seem obvious in itself – yet a cursory exploration of published material soon shows how readily historians have retreated behind their various boundaries – denominational and geographical – and refused to glimpse anything much that might be going on beyond them. In short, this book shows that while these assorted dimensions remain distinct, it is geography and politics which unite as much as they divide. The question is whether historians themselves possess both the breadth and the commitment to confront a greater picture.

This book has been a long time in the writing and in many ways it shows the advantages of taking a proper measure of time over a mature reflection. It is based solidly on published material of various kinds and one might yearn, a little at least, for something quite new mined from an archive. Although the existing historiography of twentieth-century Christianity in Britain is still patchy, and even haphazard, Keith Robbins summons his forces bravely and presents them for the reader's inspection at the foot of each page. In fact, these references are worth having in themselves. They are also suggestive. In some parts there is clearly enough material to support the new design. In other parts, often later in the book, one is left to wonder whether a premature synthesis is taking place, admirable though it is. Context – national, European and international – provides the essential cantus firmus. How did Christians view their arguments about belief and identity in a landscape defined by wars, welfare and empire? How did they participate?

The architecture of the book is established by seven sections which show the power of national contexts clearly: ‘A crisis of Christendom, 1900–1914’, ‘Just war, 1914–18’, ‘Post-war dislocations, 1919–1932: “modernity” and “modernism”’; ‘Global politics: self-determination and a Christian empire’; ‘Christian civilization in jeopardy, 1933–53; ‘The perils of prosperity, 1953–75’ and ‘Pluralism's puzzles, 1976–2000’. All of these contain sustained reflections on the politics of denominations, and of ecumenism, diversity and division at large. There is a certain reckoning with gender. Secularisation gathers momentum, inexorably. By and large, the priorities and perspectives here are what one might have come to expect, but this is an integrating work and it achieves its object with confidence. The first section is particularly creative, exploring the dimensions of structures, places, sights and sounds, time past and present and public space, but scattered throughout there are comparable excursions, into ‘managing memory’, ‘ambivalent messages’ or even ‘insular pluriformity’. Much is sombre, but the tone relaxes amiably when a discussion of Billy Graham unfolds and the reader senses how deliciously divided, by culture, manners and mores, the main participants are. Wisely, Robbins concludes with no predictions, only a caution against ‘any self-evident linear teleological trajectory’ and a swipe against ‘secularist fundamentalism’. Altogether this is a solid, lively and valuable survey and much to be prized. It surely leaves us in the author's debt.