In his foreword Brian Beck refers to John Vickers's ‘encyclopedic knowledge of Methodist history’, and it is fitting that one who perhaps has a greater knowledge of Methodist history than any living Englishman or woman, should be honoured with such an anthology. The editors describe this volume as an ‘engaging variety of essays’, and indeed most are. The anthology opens with a stalwart of the Wesley Historical Society and a noted historian in her own right – E. Dorothy Graham – penning a delightful, insightful and moving personal tribute to John Vickers. There are some nice touches of humour here (as elsewhere in the book), such as the time when John Vickers ‘was horrified … to discover that his little Ladybird book, John Wesley, was being used as a basic text in theological colleges!' – a pointer, if anything, to the fact there is always a ready demand for historical (and theological) material to be made accessible to the ‘ordinary’ reader, if such a person exists. John Vickers, of course, has done this par excellence himself in his greatest contribution to the wider study of Methodism: his Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland, which is now online and being constantly updated, an achievement for which he will probably be best remembered. Some of the chapters are, as one might expect, more interesting and effective than others. The first chapter proper is a short study by Richard Heitzenrater that picks up on one of John Vickers's quintessential skills – that of an indexer. As well as paying tribute to ‘JV’, Heitzenrater offers the reader (in typical erudite style) some useful insights into using various tools, including the internet, to access material on Methodism and the Wesleys. Edward Royle's chapter ‘Writing the local history of Methodism’ is equally instructive and includes some cautionary advice concerning factual accuracy. Other contributions include chapters by Timothy Macquiban on the ‘multi-faceted’ approach of Methodism to the problem of poverty; Kate Tiller, who uses the famous Religious Census of 1851 to examine the character of Methodism in three counties, particularly the relationship between Primitives and Wesleyans; John Pritchard, who focuses on the work of the Methodist Missionary Society in his chapter entitled ‘1913 and all that’; Clive Field's detailed account of Methodism and the building society movement; and a short piece by Charles Yrigoyen, Jr, who reviews Methodist historiography since 1950. One's criticisms of this collection are few: one might have wished for some chapters (particularly those by Heitzenrater, Royle and Yrigoyen) to have been longer. On the whole, Methodism and history is a worthy anthology though one was left wishing that the editors could have arranged for John Vickers to be interviewed, since his retrospective insights – even if recorded only briefly in the form of a postscript – would have made fascinating reading, including his account of how he turned to indexing, at which he was to become, of course, both a professional and an acknowledged expert. This would have made a good book even better. Instead we are left with a memorable concluding chapter (really an appendix) which is a revealing bibliography of John Vickers's ‘principal writings' – since the authors admit that they were only able ‘to select the most substantive of John's works’. The result is a remarkable list of the works of a remarkable scholar.