Éric Durot's impressive biography of François de Lorraine, second duke of Guise, offers a long overdue reappraisal of this central character of the French Wars of Religion. Beyond his prolific black legend, which was often reproduced in the historiography, it was very difficult to form a balanced opinion about François de Lorraine, until now. Yet the duke was at the heart of the key events that marked the end of Henri ii's reign and the beginning of the French Wars of Religion. Until recently, historians were content with playing the blame game and following in the footsteps of pamphleteers who sought to pin the persecution of Protestants on to this sole figure. The house of Guise was blamed retrospectively for the violence of the wars of religion on both hands, by both Protestant apologists and politiques at the end of the sixteenth century. The Guises' leadership of the Holy Catholic League and its association with Spain made up a convenient other against whom Henri iv's subjects could make common cause on both sides of the confessional divide, as bons français. Durot's book allows us to wind the clock back to the origins of this black legend and beyond, when the House of Lorraine was a rising star in the French political landscape during the Franco-Hapsburg war. The chronological milestones that mark its meteoric rise are important battles where François of Lorraine distinguished himself as a great captain and leader of the French army. The victory over the troops of Charles v at Metz in 1556 and the capture of Calais from the English in 1558 are the two crowning achievements of his military career. Although posterity has all but erased his legacy, the second duke of Guise was a French hero who was admired and celebrated in his time. The European dimension and ambitions of the House of Lorraine are also given their due, and can be read in conjunction with Stuart Carroll's Murderers and martyrs (Oxford 2009) which takes up the chronology of the Guises' saga where Durot has left it. The context of the Reformation in Scotland and the demise of the Auld Alliance are crucial for understanding the Guises' almost visceral anti-Calvinism. The duke's sister, Mary of Guise, was Queen Regent at the time of the rebellion of the Lords of the Congregation in Scotland, and her daughter Mary Stuart was raised in France and married to the short-lived King Francis ii. This afforded the Guises considerable influence at court just as the French Reformation was taking off, and the French nobility was split down the middle over the Reformation question. The duke's brother played a significant part here and Durot should perhaps have mentioned Cardinal Charles of Lorraine in the title of his book. He devotes about as much attention to the cardinal as he does to the duke: Durot writes about them as Gemini figures, twin leaders of the House of Lorraine. The cardinal perhaps played an equally if not more important part in the developments that led to the French Wars of Religion. As the de facto leader of the French Church, Charles was key in Catherine de’ Medici's conciliatory policy towards Protestantism with a view to re-establishing concord in the kingdom. It is only when her attempts ended in failure, a failure placed squarely at the cardinal's feet, that pluralism and temporary toleration was attempted with disastrous results. Durot's book offers a concise and up-to-date summary of the Guises' attempts to reach a theological compromise with Lutheranism, one of the most interesting developments of the recent historiographical reappraisal of the two figures. The book does sometimes leans towards a blow-by-blow account of the duke's every move, through a painstaking and thorough treatment of the available correspondence, and it could have been shorter. None the less it offers the best treatment to date of these two key figures of the French Wars of Religion, all the way up to the duke's assassination in 1563. This book describes the duke's life as an example of Renaissance self-fashioning, and argues that the House of Guise can serve as yardstick for understanding why some French noble houses refused to convert to Calvinism, when so many others did.