Do not be misled by the title of this book. Those expecting a sober study of Victorian anti-Catholicism in the mould of John Wolffe's Protestant crusade or Nigel Yates's Anglican ritualism are in for a surprise. The words EROTICA or FETISH ought to be emblazoned on the front cover. Janes's central argument is that Catholic objects and images provoked ‘sexualised anxieties’ amongst Victorian Protestants (p. 90), who often denounced them as a form of carnal deviation. Ritualism, he suggests, was ‘abhorrently exciting’, a form of ‘voyeuristic Gothic entertainment’ (p. 18). We learn about the ‘quasi-orgasmic’ thrills offered by Gothic literature and that churches built by the Cambridge Camden Society were a form of ‘architectural erotica’ (pp. 147–8). Moreover, Janes asserts that Protestants campaigned against ritualism because they had a secret lust to experience these forbidden practices. He points to the titillating nature of attacks on auricular confession, which accused Anglo-Catholic priests of interrogating young women about their sexual longings. He concludes that anti-Catholicism was much more than a clash of theological systems but ‘a fantasy of wish fulfilment’ (p. 155). The prurient nature of some anti-Catholic literature certainly deserves explanation, but Janes's elaborate interpretation of Protestant motivations goes far beyond the evidence that he presents. Perhaps descriptions of the Church of Rome as the ‘whore of Babylon’ owe more to standard biblical imagery than to Protestant desires to sleep with Victorian prostitutes. As an aside, Janes quotes a passage from the Ecclesiologist of 1850 which speaks of the ‘Anglican Communion’ (p. 64). Is this the first known use in print of the phrase (see further Colin Podmore, Aspects of Anglican identity, 36)?