This is, by all measures, an exceptional and imaginative study of the many ways in which Dutch and English (indeed, British) politics, religion and culture overlapped in the turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. From the outset, Helmers carefully and intelligently interrogates notions of a coherent, monolithic ‘public sphere’ in the early modern period, preferring instead to employ a more discursive lens influenced by the work of Gerard Hauser (pp. 20–2). The book is, however, about far more than the narrow circumscription of differing or overlapping ‘spheres’ of engagement; rather, Helmers has provided here a picture of a relationship constantly in flux, incessantly pushing at its own boundaries while also prone to fascinating crises. Part i, which maps the ‘discursive communities’ extant across the ‘Anglo-Scoto-Dutch’ sphere in the 1630s and 1640s, looks to the agents and media through which news and opinion spread across these regions. Here, British Royalists jostled with the publishing efforts of Scottish Covenanters (whose common cause with international Calvinism has received far greater scholarly attention) to create a ‘hybrid sphere’ of translations, responses and counter-responses. Part ii witnesses the politico-religious culmination of these interconnections, wherein reactions to familiar ‘British’ events are ‘mapped’ through these spheres. Here, Helmers's background in literary criticism shines: works such as Eikon Basilike, Eikonoklastes and the poetry of Marvell (to name only a few) are given new lustre through interpretation alongside their Dutch counterparts, including Constantijn Huygens, Claudius Salmasius, Joost van den Vondel and Jan Vos. These are shown to represent not only ‘echoes’ of one another – a narrow dialogue between elites – but rather the product of a shared discourse with common languages and concerns (p. 163). Helmers's findings also move beyond the literary into interpretation of visual representations of Dutch royalism, including fascinating instances of cross-regional palimpsest. Chapter vii is particularly enjoyable for both the humour of Anglo-Dutch stereotyping (‘de gestaarte Engelsman’, or ‘tailed Englishman’ being a favourite) and Helmers's smart unravelling of the millenarian angst which accompanied the conflicts of the 1650s across religious networks. Helmers retains an admirably wide lens of analysis, never losing sight of the wider ‘British’ resonances of his work (inclusive of not only Scotland, but also Ireland) while simultaneously remaining truly binational in focus. Occasionally this reader would have liked to have seen further qualification about the pervasiveness of the ‘public opinion’ evinced in these varied publications – perhaps comparable to the popular voices seen in recent works on early modern Venice and Paris – to round off the discussion; however, this would have moved beyond the established remit of Helmers's work (pp. 5–6). Indeed, the fact that this work invites so much more research into these intersections and interactions further testifies to its quality, and its relevance to anyone interested in the early modern period.