John Bale's reputation as a controversialist in mid sixteenth-century England has been moulded by the uncompromising language, scatological invective and innuendo that characterised many of his writings. Labelled ‘bilious Bale’, his works have frequently been placed on the margins of English evangelical writing. In the nineteenth century the editors of the Parker Society conceded that although Bale's writings might contribute in some way to the objectives of the Society, others could not with propriety be presented to the public, and made clear that their reprinting of selected texts should not be considered as an approval of all that Bale either said or did. More recently, Bale's contribution to Protestant history-writing, and to the polemical defence of English evangelicalism has been more widely recognised, and Wort's study of Bale and religious conversion makes a significant contribution to this rehabilitation. John Bale (1485–1563) wrote several accounts of his conversion over a twenty-year period, and these sources form the backbone of Wort's work. His analysis invites, and proposes, a more nuanced analysis of Bale's conversion, which takes into account both Bale's character and literary output, and the confessional and cultural context in which he worked. At one level, this is a book about one man, but it is a biography that is set within a myriad of significant and broader questions. The discussion ranges from Bale's personal crises to more general reflections on the process of conversion, the taxonomies of reform and confessional labels, and the reading and remodelling of the past in sixteenth-century England. Where many studies of Bale focus upon his ‘Protestant’ career, in Wort's study his life and faith before his conversion are put firmly on the agenda. Bale's polemical onslaught on the Church of Rome may remain centre-stage, but Wort tackles head-on, and effectively, the question of just how much the writings of someone who was purposefully blind to doctrinal nuance can invite a re-evaluation of ongoing historiographical debate. Bale's deep-seated fears about the apparent evidence of Catholic survival in Reformation England and the dangers of conformity rather than conversion created a style of writing that defined religious practice in terms of polar opposites rather than the fluidity that most would now accept characterised sixteenth-century religious experience and expression. Using Bale's conversion narratives to good effect, Wort is able to argue astutely for a better understanding of conversion as a process rather than event, and for the need to recognise the interaction between a personal articulation of religious identity and its social construction.