The author, for some years the editor of the journal Scottish Methodism has, by her own admission, never been happier than when ‘rummaging in public record offices and archives’, and this capacity for making primary source material accessible (and interesting) to a wider public is clearly evinced by this book. It is this solid research that has enabled Margaret Batty to produce an authoritative narrative of Methodism in Scotland, and to make some fascinating comparisons with Methodism south of the border. So, for example, we learn that whilst the itinerancy of preachers was a relative success in England and helped to keep Methodism lively and give it its distinctive character, in Scotland by contrast, it ‘became an enduring bone of contention’. John Wesley clearly found Scotland a challenge, and admitted as much at the end of his life. If the early years were not trouble-free, nor were the decades that followed, as the author traces the history of the various Methodist off-shoots during the nineteenth century – a story of progress slowed and made painful not only by external setbacks, such as the heavy-handed behaviour of English Wesleyanism, but also by internal divisions, for example the schisms of the 1840s. All these developments are delineated authoritatively and in depth, but the author is also careful to paint her narrative with a broad brush: she does not neglect the part that ordinary members such as lay preachers and Sunday school teachers played. It is hard to criticise much in this scholarly survey – perhaps there could have been a little more analysis of ecumenical developments in the twentieth century – but the only major disappointing aspect of the book comes towards the end. Whilst the title indicates that Margaret Batty's treatment covers two hundred and fifty years of Scottish Methodism, only sixteen pages are devoted to the most recent fifty. This is rather a pity, as the membership trends during this period, for example, really demand closer analysis. We find that the number of Methodist members in Scotland, both Wesleyan and Primitive, grew steadily up to Union in 1932, remaining fairly constant at around 11–12,000 until 1969. However, by the year 2000 the numbers had in fact halved (the present membership is actually less than 3,000) and this catastrophic fall suggests that the author's description of the trend as a ‘steady decline’ is a huge understatement. This apart, Scotland's Methodists is a well-written, interesting survey of an area which has hitherto only had peripheral attention from historians.