This is a scholarly and clearly-written commentary on many of the published writings of Robert Persons; the second clause of the book's title describes its content rather better than the first. The author's interests are perhaps literary rather than historical, if the distinction can be made, but the historian can be reassured that the book is largely free of the more difficult terminology of modern literary criticism, although there is much talk of ‘rhetoric’. Analysis of the writings of the famous Jesuit is woven in with a biographical account of his career. It is fair to say that the author's approach is apologetic, even hagiographic. As such he presents a useful antidote to the largely negative press which Persons once received, especially (as Houliston shows) from English writers in his own life time. The first chapter, on the ‘Legend of Father Parsons’, looks at these Protestant attacks and gives an admirable sketch of Persons's long and varied career. Houliston sees The Christian directory, a simple and most effective piece of educational writing with an entirely devotional focus (‘sweet, reasonable and even ecumenical’, p. 19), first published in 1582, as Persons's greatest and most typical work. His hostile critics saw the Directory as a hypocritical ‘Trojan horse, smuggling in Catholic doctrine to ambush the unsuspecting Protestant readers’ and a ‘propaganda ploy’. But Houliston makes a case for believing that the Directory represented Persons's ‘core interest rather than as a self-contained project isolated from the rest of his career’ (pp. 19–20). After a chapter which examines in detail the composition and structure of the Directory, a brave attempt is made in the rest of the book to support the notion that this book was in some way the core of Persons's oeuvre. The third chapter deals with the pamphlets written in response to a government proclamation of 1591 against Catholics, not only by Persons, but also by Verstegan, Stapleton and Southwell. The chief theme examined here is satire, especially when directed against Lord Burghley. Chapter iv analyses the famous Conference of 1593, where the author sensibly accepts the attribution to Persons. This book's main interest lies, according to Houliston, in ‘the promotion of a historically informed Catholic political conscience’ (p. 86). The following chapter looks at the critique of Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs’ made by Persons in 1603, where history is again a key theme. There then follows an analysis of the pamphlets Persons wrote as part of the Appellant Controversy at the end of Elizabeth's reign; and finally a chapter on his contributions to the Oath of Allegiance controversy in the first decade of the reign of James i. What emerges from Houliston's detail is a curiously emasculated, bowdlerised Persons. We are told that ‘the distinguishing feature of Persons's polemical style is restraint’ (p. 162), and that ‘Persons's political theory was not of itself original or innovative’ (p. 114). When discussing the Conference, Houlsiton argues that ‘it would be a mistake …. to focus exclusively on the subversive or rebellious dimension of A Conference about the Next Succession’ (p. 83). This lop-sided treatment of the complex, multi-faceted career of Robert Persons is an interesting exercise and in some ways acts as a useful corrective, but hardly does justice to the full achievement of one of the greatest English Catholics of his generation.