Thomas McInally's history of the Scottish Benedictine monasteries in what is now modern Germany is very much a tale of two halves. The Schottenklöster date back to the eleventh century, when Irish-Scottish monks took advantage of the Investiture Controversy to found a string of national monasteries in Germany. By the sixteenth century these monasteries were in decline and had generally ceased to be Gaelic-speaking. McInally picks up the story here; religious refugees from the Scottish Protestant Reformation sought new expressions of Catholic life in mainland Europe, resulting in Pope Gregory xiii appointing Ninian Winzet as abbot of St James's in Regensburg. Winzet subsequently managed to secure two other former Schottenklöster, those at Erfurt and Würzburg, as part of wider efforts at Catholic reform in the area. However, after this initial opening salvo, the first century of the new Schottenklöster was defined by bad management, worse behaviour – including rampant drunkenness – lack of funds and very few recruits. Apart from the obvious imperative of money, it does beg the question why the Scottish Benedictines continually sought to reacquire other former Schottenklöster, particularly the monastery in Vienna. Led by a series of incompetent abbots, the movement was under threat from both the German Bursfield Congregation, which sought to swallow it up, and resurgent Irish Catholicism that with some justification claimed to be the true founder and therefore owner of the monasteries. In McInally's opinion, the Schottenklöster needed a hero and, in the person of Placid Fleming, abbot of Regensburg and soon de facto abbot president of the Schottenklöster, they found one. In his fifty years as abbot, Fleming stabilised the Schottenklöster and restored their reputation, notably by drawing on his navy background to impose discipline, employing his cat o’ nine tails in public floggings of the unobservant monks. In a more traditional manner Fleming also mingled in political circles, turning Regensburg, according to McInally, into the most important base for Scottish Jacobites outside Saint-Germain and Rome. He also sent missionary monks back to their Scottish homeland. The second half of McInally's book is dominated by similarly big characters who secured the Schottenklöster as a leading place in the Catholic Enlightenment, including several monks who played major roles in the Bavarian Academy of Science and educational provision in the whole region. It is unclear why McInally quickly wraps up proceedings in the opening decades of the nineteenth century when he himself says that the main foundation at Regensburg continued until 1862. Yet this overview is an enjoyable, easily accessible read. One could not claim that all the complexities and complications of the monasteries’ exile existence are explored – this reviewer would have liked to have learned much more about Scottish Benedictine involvement in missionary activity – and McInally does favour character studies, particularly in the second half of the book, but as an introduction to the Schottenklöster that plugs the movement into a wider international context, acknowledging the different interests at play, it does the job.