There is, of course, no shortage of impressive literature on Newman today. Even so, the Swedish scholar Erik Sidenvall carves out a very satisfactory claim on that much occupied territory with this tidy volume, a study of reactions to Newman in Britain after he had left the Church of England and embraced Rome. Sidenvall's source material often comes from an almost extraordinary number of contemporary periodicals, some regional (from Aris's Birmingham Gazette and the Lincolnshire Chronicle to the Chester Courant and the Hastings and St Leonard's Observer), others national (from the Penny Protestant Operative to The Pulpit). Many, though not all, are Christian. As for individuals, there is a good deal on Charles Kingsley, enough on Gladstone and Samuel Wilberforce, rather little on Dean Church and Dean Stanley. This might produce a rather congested study, but Sidenvall himself writes vigorously, revealing a taut approach, sometimes theoretical, and a carefully measured construction of argument. His purpose is to trace a clear line between the dismay which Newman's conversion provoked during his Oxford career and the almost stately recognition which he enjoyed in a venerated old age. What light does that progression cast on the state of popular anti-Catholicism in Britain in these long years? Sidenvall has much to say in reply, and one might feel tempted to add to the list. Perhaps there were different targets to arouse popular ire. Perhaps the rhetoric of debate simply grew more genteel as the late Victorian world became more self-assured? But then, did that sense of outright fear that Newman's Catholicism might unhinge the Protestant nation itself merely drain away, leaving a great deal much as it already had been? After all, a catastrophe had not occurred. The public imagination is often ready to indulge a faded infant terrible, after all, and to enjoy with affection the presence of innocuous celebrity.