Andrew Atherstone justly claims that his book is the first detailed analysis of the career of Charles Portalès Golightly (1807–85). Inasmuch as previous historians have taken note of Golightly, it has almost always been in a negative, derisive, manner. A stern and unbending Protestant, dedicated to resisting any hint of ‘romanising’ tendencies in the Church of England, Golightly could hardly appear less attractive to an age in which theological questions have declined in political significance and in which ecumenism is the prevailing fashion. But in the years immediately following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and with the first stirrings of the Oxford Movement, Golightly was far from alone among Anglican (and, for that matter Dissenting) clergymen in fearing that the Reformation heritage of the Church was under threat. With a view to exploring that defensive and anxious mentality, Atherstone has produced a thorough, well-documented and convincing study, drawing on his subject's extensive archival deposits and his published works – including numerous letters to the newspaper press. He shows that, possessed of a comfortable private income, Golightly had no need to seek ecclesiastical preferment, and that his parochial experience was limited to brief curacies in Kent and Surrey. Instead, residing in Holywell Street, he remained on the fringes of Oxford University and became, in effect, a professional controversialist. He was a leading promoter of the Martyrs' Memorial (1841–2) to commemorate the Protestant heroes of Mary's reign, a persistent critic of Cuddesdon College and a scourge of Ritualism. So vehement was his manner of contention that numerous friendships of his early life – including those with John Henry Newman and Samuel Wilberforce – were fractured. For, in his youth, Golightly belonged to a broad Anglican consensus, in which High Churchmen and Evangelicals shared much common ground, and when the Protestant credentials of the established Church were largely taken for granted. And for all his subsequent anti-Romanism, he did not accept the designation of Evangelical as applied to himself, and he is surprisingly difficult to classify in terms of nineteenth-century Church parties. Two observations of a slightly critical nature might be added. Firstly, a comparison could have been essayed between Golightly and Joseph Mendham (1769–1856) of Sutton Coldfield, who also enjoyed the financial independence to devote his post-1829 years to attacks on Catholicism. Mendham's collection of rare books, owned by the Law Society and currently housed in Canterbury Cathedral Library, is an important resource for the question of nineteenth-century anti-Catholicism. Secondly, the term ‘spy’ in the title, with its implications of surreptitious activity, is somewhat misleading. There was nothing secret about Golightly's objectives and methods; he sought publicity and sustained much public criticism. Overall, however, Atherstone deserves our gratitude for recognising that Golightly has been too easily dismissed from the historical mainstream and that he represented a significant body of opinion within the nineteenth-century Church.