How does one make available, and understandable, the successive editions of the Book of Common Prayer? As Brian Cummings says, to include everything is impossible and radical selection is essential. This useful book contains the entire text of the 1662 Prayer Book complete with additional services from the period 1662–85, along with selected texts of the 1549 and 1559 Prayer Books. 1559 is included rather than 1552 because it had a long life up to the slightly revised 1604, unlike its predecessor which was in force for only a few months. The editor tries to explain even the most basic elements to a non-liturgical and non-theological reader, while also including a thorough historical introduction and over a hundred pages of detailed notes on the development of the Prayer Book in its various editions. These are generally accurate and based on the standard liturgical handbooks without going deeply into the theology, though so condensed that I am not sure how useful they would be to the general reader for whom the book seems intended, and a few can be misleading (for example. the description of ‘The order of the communion’ on p. xxv, and mention of a 1549 ‘procession on Easter Day’ on p. 726). But many will find the volume a convenient and informative companion for which there is no published equal.