John Maiden's stated aim is to deal specifically with the role of differing comprehensions of ‘national religion’ in the ecclesiastical crisis which erupted in 1927 and 1928 when parliament found that it had before it a revision of the Prayer Book. It was indeed ‘a refining moment’ and he describes how the various party groupings within the Church of England drew up their battle lines. The Evangelicals were prepared to defend to the death their Protestant principles and evoked support from some parts of Nonconformity by enlisting easily available anti-papal prejudices, while the High Churchmen, sadly divided into English Catholics and Western Catholics (with often details of ecclesiastical millinery being the crucial factor) manned the barricades against any possible dilution of their Catholic heritage. Caught in the middle was what Maiden calls ‘the Centre-High’. I seem to recall that we were accustomed to labelling them ‘Prayer Book Catholics’, not an inappropriate designation in this context. They were those who were not too high and certainly not too low in churchmanship. If it seems incredible that just over eighty years ago these battles were being fought, actually on the floor of the Lords and Commons (particularly as it turned out the House of Commons), this well-constructed book most helpfully provides all the details of the varying concepts of what comprised national religion in England at the time. Would any of it be packaged today as our Anglican patrimony?