The author describes his book, which began life as an Oxford D.Phil. dissertation, as primarily a work of religious history but also one which speaks to those currents in contemporary Evangelicalism that emphasise the new creation, the priority of social justice and a broader view of salvation than that traditionally allowed by some Evangelical teaching. His conclusions will challenge views still frequently encountered in both constituencies. He has steeped himself in contemporary literature and steers the reader through complex bodies of thought. This body of writing, he insists, is to be taken seriously. Evangelical thought was not static in mid-century but responded to the extraordinary dynamism of the time by elaborating a doctrine of ‘premillennialism’. What that amounted to is the chief preoccupation of the book. Historians, it is argued, have failed to understand the difference between ‘historicists’ and ‘dispensationalists’ in their comments on premillennialism, not that many of them have exercised their minds on this point. Naturally, ‘reimagining’ time and eternity was not a straightforward matter. Spence takes us through the thought of many writers, all struggling to reach similar though not necessarily the same conclusions. Eternal life was not the same as everlasting life. Faith in God was not simply for a better life in the future but it involved a fresh perspective on the present. This careful presentation and analysis of these writings sets them too in a ‘Romantic’ context and in a time when the pioneering greatness of Britain seemed indisputable. The premillennialist project is seen above all as a brief and intriguing coalescence of the old and the new: a pre-critical prophetic framework generating a liberalising theological and social agenda. Spence has made his case that the writers with whom he is concerned shared with diverse contemporaries a surprising amount of common ground.