The Lambeth Conferences have sometimes found an awkward place in the discussions of church historians. Inaugurated in 1867, they have sought to represent not a national Church at work in the contexts which historians expect to study but an international Communion (or, perhaps, a denominational empire) labouring to understand itself as a distinct tradition. In recent years Anglican scholars have begun to view Anglicanism at large as a new academic subject, one which blends national and international themes and provides a meeting place for the distinctive voices of that realm – historians, theologians and scholars of liturgy, ecclesiology and ethics. In this development Paul Avis has played a particularly generous, and distinguished, role and here he is joined as editor by the American scholar, Benjamin Guyer, an emerging authority on the writings of the Caroline divines. Their own essays, a broad reflection on the role of the archbishop of Canterbury within the successive conferences and an intricate analysis of the first conference and the question of the royal supremacy in 1867, are excellent. Their chosen colleagues in the venture include the historians Jeremy Morris (on changing Anglican episcopal models and patterns since 1800), Mark Chapman (William Reed Huntingdon and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral) and Charlotte Methuen (the 1920 Appeal to All Christian People). Further explorations of different kinds tend to dwell more contemporaneously on later preoccupations: ecclesiastical law, ‘methodologies’, mission and post-colonialism, marriage and sexuality, ‘Anglican obliquity’ and ecumenical ramifications. This diversity should not put off a purposeful ecclesiastical historian: although the intended audience is to be found largely outside the realm of the history department the historical reflections at work in this book are well worth having.