Michael Questier's stated aim is to recover the range of voices lobbying for influence during the period. In particular, he attunes himself to the Catholic voice that permeated even what appeared to be soundly Protestant infighting, such as the Vestiarian Controversy of the 1560s. Setting himself against a still dominant (at least popularly) Whiggish sense of inevitability about the success of the Protestant Reformation, Questier seeks to recapture the uncertainty of the period. As such, this book represents a synthesis of not just his own work, but that of others, an attempt to plot the British reformations in terms of dynastic politics. Telling the tale predominantly through the state papers, Questier weaves the three kingdoms together expertly; he is particularly sensible to the importance of events in Scotland. In his hands, the series of religious and political upheavals in sixteenth-century Scotland is presented as something of a never-ending car crash that, somehow, eventually panned out well for James vi & i, despite the numerous smoking wreckages left behind. Even more pointed is Questier's contention that Mary, Queen of Scots, was central to events in Britain; he re-evaluates her actions to declare waspishly that she cannot simply be misogynistically dismissed as a stupid woman. However, the really satisfying aspect of this book is the prominence of international events in the narrative, from the impact of the French Wars of Religion, the activities of the Guise family and rebellions in the Netherlands, to the French and Spanish crowns eyeing up Britain and Ireland for confessional motives. It underlines that events happening thousands of miles away could cause a series of ripples that affected the religio-political dynamics of various nation states. In this sense, the book works to shift the historiography of the Reformation period back towards a political reading rather than the current trend towards a socio-cultural understanding. All this means that things can get complicated and readers needs to keep their wits about them, though it is to Questier's credit that he does not shy away from the dense webs at play. Certainly, in Questier's hands the idea of a continual Elizabethan crisis has never seemed more compelling, he presenting the queen as squeezed in a fast evaporating middle ground. Questier's overarching claim is that, from the accession of Elizabeth i to the early years of Charles i, it is impossible to make sense of the period without the Catholic voice. His is a tale of the constant balancing and shifting of power between different religious groupings, the kingdoms affected by events outside their borders as much as by those within. Pugnacious, peppery and lively, Dynastic politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630 succeeds in reintroducing and reintegrating Catholic voices into the ‘mainstream’ narrative, Questier railing against the historiographical tendency to view Protestantism as the consensus option. As far as contemporaries were concerned, religion and politics were up for grabs; there was nothing guaranteed about Protestant success.