In his recent Gifford lectures (freely available as a podcast), Diarmaid MacCulloch noted that ‘Noise was the chief characteristic of the Protestant Reformation.’ What is more, it was generated and legitimated by magisterial reformers. However, in English terms one particular kind of religious ‘noise’ – the hymn tradition now seen as so intimately related to worship within the Church of England – owes a substantial debt to Nonconformists. This book, produced under the auspices of the excellent Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies, seeks to provide a detailed and scholarly account of this contribution. It succeeds impressively. As befits a work which will provide the foundation for much further study many of the chapters contain a wealth of biographical and bibliographical information. Individual attention is given to the towering figure of Isaac Watts, the Independent Philip Doddridge, the Baptist hymn editor John Rippon, the editor of The Congregational hymn book (1836) Josiah Conder, W. Garrett Horder, the author of The hymn lover (1889), and the Unitarian James Martineau. Bibliographies of English and Welsh denominational hymn collections, and printed collections of music for English dissenters are provided at the end. Throughout the level of textual and contextual analysis is high, with perhaps J. R. Watson's discussion of how Watts's hymns were shaped by his dissenting experience, and his relationship to the existing tradition of Independency, and David M. Thompson's situating of Conder within nineteenth-century literary contexts, deserving particular mention. Three chapters take broader approaches. Elizabeth Clarke examines the controversies over hymn-singing among dissenting communities in the seventeenth century, and the roots of Nonconformist hymn-writing; E. Wyn James traces the development of the Welsh hymn and the emergence of Wales as ‘the Land of Song’ (p. 263) by the mid-1870s; and Nicholas Temperley provides the account of the music of dissent which is of central importance to this volume (this is well illustrated by examples of staff notation, although it is a shame that this investigation is not accompanied by a CD – a podcast even). As a result of this book, scholars of dissent have a very strong base on which to build. What research agendas might be pursued? Clarke's carefully argued and wide-ranging chapter indicates that there is certainly more to be said about seventeenth-century developments, and the connection between the writing of Nonconformist poetry and of hymns could be probed further. More too could be said concerning the cross-fertilisation between dissenting and Anglican hymn traditions (although many of the contributors have suggestive comments to make on this subject). Finally, while this has hardly been unremarked, one of the most striking things about many of the hymn collections discussed remains their ecumenism. Hymns from different denominations jostle happily together. If a number of contributors are right that hymns provided a more accessible conduit for doctrine than printed prose works, or even perhaps sermons, then this ecumenism has obvious implications for our attempts to examine ‘popular’ religion, and the vexed question of the relationship between the theological positions held by ministers and those held by their flocks in both Nonconformist communities and the Church of England.