In broad outline, the story of the attempt to educate, civilise and, particularly, Christianise the urban masses of late Victorian Britain is well known. To mix ‘faith signifiers’, this was a case of collective recognition. If the ‘left-out millions’ in the teeming cities would not come to Mohammed, then hundreds of would-be prophets of improvement must come to them. Imbued alike with missionary zeal and adamantine Christian certainty, come they did – and particularly to London, the population of which was ten times greater than that of any other British city and its social problems uniquely well-documented. Thanks to the work of Ellis and of Briggs and Macartney, the story of Toynbee Hall and of that formidable husband-and-wife team Henrietta and Samuel Barnett has already been given detailed treatment. Now Nigel Scotland has performed a valuable service by broadening the focus. He provides a wider study of the missions and settlements in London. We now have an assiduous compilation of the work of Cambridge colleges in Camberwell and Battersea and of leading public schools such as Harrow, Radley and Winchester in Docklands. It is also valuable to have a chapter on the work of the Women's University Settlement in Southwark and of Mayfield House, founded by Cheltenham Ladies' College. The book is never less than competently researched but it is not especially adventurous in its intellectual scope. It is much stronger in accumulating evidence about educational and missionary provision than it is on the impact of that provision on working-class Londoners. The final chapter – ‘What the squires achieved’ – is too brief and too general. It is arguably too optimistic as well, since it draws disproportionately on the missionaries' own perceptions. Explanations of why missionary activity declined is also frustratingly underdeveloped. Nor has the author been well served by his publisher. The bibliography is not helpfully set out. Printed and manuscript material is not listed separately and it is not always possible to infer the precise location of some archival collections. The book's photographs are grainy and encompass too many repetitively ritualised group snaps. Worse, the copy editor really should have addressed problems of faulty grammar and dubious neologisms. A sentence such as ‘The state of drinking water in south London was equally as bad’ (p. 5) should not have survived even cursory proof-reading. The less said about the persistent use of ‘impacted’, especially as a transitive verb – as in ‘the movement also impacted Nonconformists’, the better. Did the Baptists need root, rather than Regent's, canal work, I wonder?