This biography of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005), who was sometimes called ‘the grande dame of western Orthodoxy’, is a significant contribution to the history of the Orthodox Church in the west and of the ecumenical movement. Born in Alsace of a Jewish mother and Lutheran father, she was brought up as a Lutheran and felt at home in both France and Germany: she studied philosophy in Strasbourg, theology in Paris and spent a year of her theological studies in Berlin. In Paris she met Fr Lev Gillet, then in charge of a French-speaking Orthodox parish, who was to become a life-long friend, and was received into the Orthodox Church in 1929. Even after her conversion to Orthodoxy, she worked for a time as an auxiliary Lutheran pastor and was known to call herself a ‘Protestant Orthodox’. Following her marriage in 1933 to the Russian émigré André Behr, she lived in France and devoted her life and writing to building a bridge between east and west, promoting dialogue between different Christian traditions and supporting ecumenism. Through the pages of this biography pass many of the great figures of the Russian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century: Fr Sergi Bulgakov, Semyon Frank, Vladimir Lossky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, Paul Evdokimov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Particularly important was her study of the role of women in the Orthodox Church and her exploration of that taboo subject in Orthodox circles – the ordination of women.