Henry viii's 1521 response to Luther's vigorous pruning of the seven sacraments is one of the most well-known publishing events of the sixteenth century. A less famous exchange between the king and the professor took place a few years later when Luther, led by the king of Denmark to believe that Henry was now favourable to the Gospel, wrote an uncharacteristically conciliatory letter in private, only to receive both royal barrels. Henry subsequently published the correspondence, which was reprinted and translated throughout Europe by Catholic controversialists who were delighted to have this evidence, as they portrayed it, of Luther's ‘recantation’, and to have their ranks swelled once more by royalty. Of course, those same ranks were to be thinned by their new comrade's executions of More and Fisher; but for now they made hay. Rex and his collaborators have put us all in their debt with this careful edition and translation, not only of the original letters but also of the satellite publications, all with lively translations. The centrepiece is undoubtedly the transcription of a manuscript version of the letters from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, which here serves as the base text against which variants in the twenty or so print editions are registered. Rex himself disarmingly concedes that no work of this sort can be without errors. These, however, are not serious: the worst slip I found was the translation of ‘1500 annis’ as ‘1500 books’ (p. 169). The decision to cite Luther's works in the Weimarer Ausgabe alone and not, where translations exist, in Fortress Press's Luther's works was an odd one, considering that elsewhere no knowledge of Latin or German is assumed on the part of the reader. Even so, this volume will be of immense interest and use, both to those who are limited to English and to those who are not.