This scholarly and elegantly written study is a fine example of the way in which the history of a single institution can run like a thread through a much more general history. Martin Murphy has made a fine job of recounting, and setting in a wider context, the life of one such, the College of St Gregory the Great in Seville, which was founded in 1590 to train Catholic priests and missionaries to work, and risk a violent death, in the England of Elizabeth i. The book is thoroughly researched, with useful and interesting appendices, and, although it sometimes deals with grim matters, it also has some entertaining moments, and many vivid ones. The case of the Seville college, like its equivalents in Valladolid, Douai and Rome, illustrates the tensions which arose among those who framed the Catholic response to Elizabeth's religious settlement and political stances. It also illustrates the misunderstanding that frequently arose, in Philip ii's Spain, between the English students and the local population, who often suspected them of being heretics and even spies. Given the difficulties that were faced by the early students, in particular, it might also have been good to highlight the ironic fact that the very model for seminaries such as St Gregory's had been laid down by the English Synod of 1555–6, in the reign of Queen Mary i, and under the presidency of Cardinal Reginald Pole. In recounting the history of the Seville college, which lasted until the expulsion of the Jesuits from Iberia in 1767, Murphy is commendably frank and honest in depicting the religious and political dilemmas and conflicts that affected it from time to time. In particular, he directly confronts the tension between loyalty to the Roman See and allegiance to English monarchs, from Elizabeth i to George iii, that faced the Seville students, as well as their fellows in other ‘English colleges’. By focusing so carefully and precisely on one particular institution, Murphy has highlighted some of the painful effects of the religious divisions that split the Church and Europe in the sixteenth century, and long after. In the process, he has also provided insights into other related matters, including Anglo-Irish as well as Anglo-Spanish relations, from the death of Mary and Pole in 1558, up to the nineteenth century, which in Spain was so dramatic, in religious as well as political terms. It is to be hoped that this work will also appear in English, so that it may reach many more readers who would undoubtedly benefit from it.