An arresting likeness of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London (NPG 535). Produced by Gerlach Flicke (d. 1558) in 1545, it depicts an individual skilfully navigating the tensions of Tudor religious politics. On the one hand, as Diarmaid MacCulluch reflects, this composition borrows from Hans Holbein the Younger's (c. 1497–1543) image of Cranmer's predecessor, Archbishop William Warham (c. 1450–1532), and presents an image of a highly traditional churchman (Louvre, INV 1334). On the other hand, the details of this portrait reveal a reformer, intent on bringing change to the English Church. Instead of Warham's prayer book, Cranmer grasps a copy of the Epistles of St Paul and in front of him lies a copy of St Augustine's treatise De fide et operibus alongside an administrative letter addressed to the archbishop. These three texts show Cranmer not only as an administrator, but also as a preacher of St Paul's doctrine of justification by grace alone. However, they also highlight his willingness to expound this evangelical message within the bounds of Henry viii’s (1491–1547) doctrinal orthodoxy, which insisted that salvation came from both faith and works.

At the outset of her excellent new biography, Susan Wabuda reminds readers that Cranmer is ‘the most challenging’ figure to understand in early modern England, and that his complicated career included many decisions filled with ‘contradictions that were hard to follow at the time and defy easy explanations even now’ (p. 1). Furthermore, she notes that he seemed ‘subtle’ to many of his contemporaries: a criticism, which in the sixteenth century meant both hard to understand and cunning. His public persona was ‘deliberately unrevealing’, and he had ‘many secrets’ (p. 18). Given these difficulties of understanding and interpretation, Wabuda's engaging narrative is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Cranmer. It brings to life his ecclesiastical career as well as those contexts required to make sense of it.

In ten concise and beautifully written chapters, Wabuda presents Cranmer's life and his legacies. By her own admission, this text serves two purposes: ‘to provide readers with a guide to the achievements of one of the most problematic figures who ever presided over the English Church’ (p. 10) and to ‘advance original points of interest’ (p. 4). It is, thus, a work suited for both beginners and those long schooled in the intricacies of the English Reformation. As a result, it supplies an accessible and cutting-edge account of Cranmer's life and principal writings, which will be a particular boon to undergraduates and general readers daunted by the length of MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer: a life (a revised edition of which was released in 2017). Simultaneously, it furnishes wonderful descriptions of important contexts, such as education in sixteenth-century Cambridge (pp. 20–2, 25–7) or the unique institution of the Six Preachers at Canterbury Cathedral (pp. 158–9), which will be of value to everyone interested in Tudor England. Likewise, Wabuda draws on her specialist knowledge of religious recantation to illuminate both Cranmer's own submissions (pp. 234–8) and those of his fellow Englishmen and women (pp. 140, 171–3).

However, the most notable feature of this work for scholars is the original insight that it offers into Cranmer's life through the use of new source material (pp. 5–6). These novel points of interest are not confined to esoteric issues, such as which of Cranmer's brothers-in-law perished in the blaze at his palace in Canterbury in December 1543 (pp. 168, 183 n. 29), but rather include fundamental reinterpretations of the man himself. For example, scholars have long puzzled over the extraordinary length of time (eight years) that it took Cranmer to achieve his BA. MacCulloch suggested that this delay may have resulted from either ‘problems in absorbing information quickly’, similar to the traits that indicated to Patrick Collinson that Cranmer had a mind ‘which would have been awarded an upper second, not a first, in modern tripos examination’, or else from ‘family financial worries’. However, now that Wabuda has discovered that Cranmer was ordained in 1515 (pp. 5, 22, 25, 37 n. 26), his first marriage must be dated earlier than has been previously done. This fact, in turn, indicates that the ‘most probable reason’ that he received his BA so late was neither due to an inability nor financial woes, but rather to his unconventional decision to marry (p. 22).

It is a more unconventional Cranmer that comes to the fore in Wabuda's narrative, one marked by ‘remarkable independence of mind’ (p. 55) and a willingness ‘to maintain his own opinions despite the hostility of his prince’ (p. 56). This is the Cranmer prepared to take the ‘tremendous risk’ of writing to Henry viii on behalf of the imprisoned Anne Boleyn (p. 115) and to stand against the doctrinal positions promoted by his prince in the House of Lords (p. 115). Concurrently, Wabuda presents the archbishop as a ‘vulnerable servant’ (p. 73), outflanked by episcopal rivals, such as John Stokesley (1475–1539) and Stephen Gardiner (c. 1495–1555), and surpassed by his co-religionist, Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540). In her narrative, readers easily can discern reasons why Flicke's portrait of Cranmer depicts him not only grasping the Pauline Epistles, but also with Augustine's defence of both faith and works and an administrative letter.

This volume, of course, contains minor infelicities. Cranmer's chaplain, Thomas Becon, was born in 1512, not 1515 (p. 167). Likewise, the all too often repeated myth that John Bale was tutored at Jesus College, Cambridge (p. 27), has been repudiated by J. Crompton and L. P. Fairfield and systematically discredited by Richard Rex. Moreover, the popular notion that the laity was forbidden to read the Bible in English under late medieval law (p. 101) misunderstands the Oxford Constitutions of 1408, which merely prohibited the making of new, unauthorised translations of the Bible. However, these foibles do not detract from the overall achievements of this superb biography. It should be read by everyone interested in Cranmer, and the profound transformations of English religion that he helped to bring about.