This volume is Raymond Chapman’s third contribution to the expanding collection of Canterbury Studies in Spiritual Theology, which offer a taste of classic writings from the Anglican tradition. Unlike most ‘readers’ which dodge around frustratingly with short extracts from a multitude of publications, this is an abridgement of Richard Hooker’s one major work, The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker may be a founding father of Anglicanism but his writing can be complex and discursive, and Chapman admits that few will read him ‘for the sheer pleasure of his style’ (p. 18). Therefore this attractive abridgement, with helpful headings summarizing the argument, will be warmly welcomed by those who want the gist without tackling the daunting original. The text is taken from John Keble’s edition of 1836, with modernized spelling, which is easier for the general reader than the critical Folger edition of 1977. Hooker’s legacy for Anglicanism is disputed, but Chapman’s measured introduction does not push any particular ecclesiological agenda. He does, however, agree that Hooker was not ‘a proto-Tractarian, promoting an Anglican via media’ but ‘a man of the Reformation’ in the Calvinist tradition’ (p. 21).