One of the abiding conundrums of the English Reformation is the failure of Lutheranism to have a more significant impact on the English Church. The failure might be more explicable if the only representative of the new theology had been the uncompromising figure of Luther himself. But in Philip Melanchthon the Lutherans had not only a theologian and humanist scholar of the first rank, but a man whose qualities of personality and as a teacher made him eminently suited for the purpose of exporting the new ideas beyond the Lutheran heartland. John Schofield's examination of Melanchthon's influence on the English Reformation provides an extended review of the reformer's early years, his development as a humanist and theologian and his emergence as the acceptable face of Lutheranism, culminating in his authorship of the Confession and Apology of Augsburg. Schofield traces the many efforts of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer and their evangelical fellow travellers, not to mention Henry viii and Edward vi, to engage Melanchthon in the development of the Church of England. Notwithstanding the considerable influence of Melanchthon's confessional writings on English formularies of the faith, the German preferred to remain at a certain remove, offering advice and direction in dozens of letters to Cranmer and to Henry, but crucially failing to accept any of the many invitations to visit England that he received between 1533 and 1553. Would history have been different if he had made the journey? It is difficult to imagine that the highly regarded author of the seminal expression of the Lutheran faith could have had anything less than a profound influence had he actually stood on English soil, but his steadfast refusal ever to go means that every discussion of Melanchthon and England is bound to end in an unsatisfactory chorus of what-might-have-been.