This is a useful biography of an under-valued archbishop of Canterbury, devised to attract the interest of a broad readership drawn to the character studies of leading ecclesiastics and the unsteady history of the British monarchy. A good proportion of the research is innovative and the general effect is alert, sensitive and well-judged. The royal family and the abdication crisis receive intensive treatment and although the latter rather outstays its welcome Beaken presents a vivid narrative and an astute weighing of sources and problems. A chapter on the 1927/8 Prayer Book and the reform of liturgy tends to meander, while another on Canterbury between the wars feels sketchy and uncommitted. A third on the Second World War is far more secure in domestic matters than it is in foreign ones (and there is a valuable picture of the wartime bishops' conferences, traces of which appear in Bishop Bell's papers). Lang was a striking embodiment of a distinctive civilisation and he manifested many of its qualities, paradoxes and dilemmas in all sorts of discreet ways. Above all, he served it impressively well. Sober scholars of ecclesiastical history will disavow much interest in the interiorities of a private life, but a good deal of the significance of Beaken's study may come to rest in his convincing repudiation of the tittle-tattle that Lang was a silent homosexual. This is an uneven book, and it is tempting to say that it is rather ‘Anglican’. But at its best it certainly hits the mark.