Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803–78), Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh (1849–52) and Dublin (1852–78) uniquely dominated the mid-Victorian Catholic Church, reshaping post-Famine Irish Catholicism. This volume presents twenty-seven essays examining diverse aspects of Cullen's life and career. The result impressively deepens our understanding of one of nineteenth-century Ireland's paramount public figures. However, it does not significantly challenge or change the accepted views on Cullen. No article overturns the received ideas of Cullen's power within his own Church, his committed ultramontanism, his nuanced and ambiguous political legacy and, perhaps most important, his presiding over the process which secured the centrality of the Church's institutions in the lives of its members. S. J. Connolly's article addresses the idea of a Cullenite ‘devotional revolution’ first proposed by Emmet Larkin, and other important contributions in this collection similarly update critical themes – Eamon Duffy, Oliver Rafferty and Larkin himself on Cullen's ultramontanism, for example. Matthew Kelly, Virginia Crossman and James H. Murphy's articles explore Cullen's political life. Kelly examines Cullen's condemnation of the revolutionary Fenians within the constitutional framework of the Union, Crossman demonstrates the substantial political dimensions of Cullen's social welfare efforts, and Murphy examines Cullen's political communication during Gladstone's first government, an ultimately failed cooperation between official Irish Catholicism and the British state. Indeed, Andrew Shield's article on the Irish Tory views of Paul Cullen balances this strand of the volume well. Another valuable theme is the arts and built environment, registered in contributions by Eileen Kane, John Montague, Fintan Cullen and Mary E. Daly. Daly's article, on public expression in Dublin, is one of the most interesting in the book, exploring Dublin city life as a manifestation of both Cullen's ecclesiastical politics and the changing shape of Ireland's once-Protestant public sphere. Miriam Moffitt and Ian Ker discuss Cullen's jostling with other important figures within Irish Catholicism – John McHale and John Henry Newman, respectively. The book also examines Cullen's policies and efforts beyond Ireland: in Risorgimento Italy by Anne O'Connor, at the Irish College in Paris by Liam Chambers, and in Australia and New Zealand by Rory Sweetman. One of the most valuable essays is Colin P. Barr's historiographic study, which demonstrates both the cardinal's personal complexity and the evolving contours of professional Irish history. Many articles in this collection are impressively wide in their lenses, and other, narrowly-focused essays sit awkwardly next to them. The contributions are all around 7,500 words, and one wonders if a volume of twenty journal-length articles would not have produced a stronger book. As it is, most of the contributions in this volume are engaging, interesting, important pieces that demonstrate the vibrancy of Victorian Irish Catholicism. Through its integration of cultural, intellectual and political history, and strong emphasis on the diversity and complexity of Paul Cullen, this volume in turn emphasises the diversity and complexity of a Church once tarred as monolithic.