This edited volume includes papers from the 15th in a series of seminars, ‘Representation of Older People in Ageing Research’, sponsored by the Centres for Policy on Ageing and Ageing and Biographical Research. It provides an overview of contemporary issues in the study of masculinities and ageing. The chapters cover a variety of facets in older men's lives including divorce, widowhood, childlessness, disability and grandparenthood. They remind us that although people often think of older people as alike, there is tremendous diversity among older men.

The introduction notes that it is only recently that scholars have begun to study the intersection of ageing and masculinity as they affect older men, and there has been little qualitative research on ageing men's experiences. Tarrant and Watts bring together a group of scholars to address the social meaning of being an older man and the challenges in conducting research with members of this population.

Although each chapter covers a different aspect of older men's lives, two themes are pervasive. Firstly, most highlight at least one paradox or contradiction faced by the men being studied. For instance, in Chapter 3, Kate Bennett studies widowers and notes that people expect bereaved men to be emotional while, at the same time, expecting them to be stoic in the face of their loss. David Jackson notes that, although we often think of older men as static, they experience many changes in their lives and face a ‘contradictory mixture of privilege, pain, power and fragility in the ageing process' (p. 64). Similarly, in Chapter 2, Kate Davidson deals with single and divorced men, and demonstrates that they are often evaluated using a ‘“female script” such as the need for intimacy and social engagement’ (p. 18).

Secondly, the chapters raise methodological challenges involved in studying older men. Robin Hadley (Chapter 6) focuses on the difficulties he had recruiting older men to study involuntary childlessness. Of interest are the early decisions Hadley made in the name of ethics. He used very official and professional language but found that using ‘de-powered’ and ‘humanised’ terms (Dad instead of Father) was helpful. He worried that letting his research participants know that he was involuntarily fatherless would ‘bias' their response. In fact, participants felt that their shared experience made him a more trustworthy interviewer. Hadley's chapter reminds us the ethics-review regimes tend to exaggerate the vulnerability of older people and to protect them in ways that may be neither appropriate nor necessary.

Kate Davidson (Chapter 2) provides a brief but informative discussion of the difference in how older male participants approached being interviewed by a man, to whom they talked about occupational success, compared to being interviewed by a woman, with whom they were more likely to discuss sexual (dys)function. David Jackson's chapter, ‘Ageing Men Are Changing Men’, promotes critical autobiography and biographical interviewing as emancipatory methods. He argues that having a number of one-hour interviews was necessary ‘to facilitate emotionally honest interviews' (p. 65). Anna Tarrant (Chapter 4) discusses the connections between ageing masculinities and the body in men's understanding of their role as grandfathers. Her chapter demonstrates the usefulness of an inductive approach. When she asked men about interaction with their grandchildren, they talked a lot about their bodies and bodily interactions, a result she likely did not anticipate.

There are chapters with particular strengths. Kate Davidson's chapter includes never married and divorced men, who almost never find their way into research in this field. Kate Bennett presents a close analysis of the language men used during qualitative interviews to assert their masculinity. David Jackson's combination of critical autobiography and biographical oral history elucidates his experience as a ‘74-year-old disabled ageing man’ (p. 57) and the experiences of a lifelong asthmatic man whose identity as a delicate boy influenced his sense of himself as a man.

On first reading Studies of Ageing Masculinities: Still in Their Infancy? I was disappointed with the thinness of the data presented, brevity that is a function of the book's being a collection of seminar papers. However, when I reread the book more carefully, I noticed the two important themes discussed above regarding the contradictions and paradoxes of ageing masculinities and the challenges in doing research with older men. A concluding chapter that brought this discussion together would have been useful. Nonetheless, this slim volume provides a good starting point for more in-depth discussions of older men and masculinities. The title poses the question of whether the study of ageing masculinities is still in its infancy. The papers in this book begin to move us out of that infancy.