The study of English theology in the nineteenth century is fragmentary and patchy. David Thompson introduces a degree of coherence by attending to one centre over an extended period. He throws light in some unexpected corners while providing plenty of further information on the great Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort. Reaching back into the late eighteenth century with a thorough discussion of Richard Watson and William Paley sets the stage – and the tone. Readers will find them more sympathetic after reading this account. Herbert Marsh receives due appreciation for translating Michaelis (Eichhorn was considered too radical for publication by the University Press) but this did not lead to the later pre-eminence of Cambridge in New Testament scholarship. Marsh's retaining Lady Margaret's chair when he became bishop of Llandaff and then Peterborough was not good for the subject. The work of different church party leaders is duly chronicled and ‘the Coleridgean inheritance’ duly reported, making the book a mine of information. Neither is humour entirely lacking. Westcott's advice to the new Hulsean Professor, Herbert Ryle, is memorable: ‘Never tell the undergraduates anything.’ James Prince Lee so hated injustice that he disapproved of his father's fishing: ‘his sympathies were so entirely on the side of the fish’ (p. 96). More seriously, Julius Hare believed ‘that every party triumph is an injury to the whole Church, and an especial injury to the party which wins the triumph’ (p. 92).

If Hare is one of this book's heroes, the more obvious are, as to be expected, Westcott, Hort and Lightfoot. Thompson provides plenty of interesting biographical information and some account of their writings and aims (partly apologetic). This is the work of a meticulous church historian, with an eye for lots of detail, not a philosophically inclined systematic theologian or broad brush, and it would perhaps be unfair to ask for more analysis. Lesser figures are reported on, including ‘Some nonconformist voices’ (chapter vii), notably the very substantial P. T. Forsyth, minister at Emmanuel Congregational. The story ends with F. C. Burkitt (1864–1935) whom some of us still remember at one remove – a link to the present, but now tenuous. Times have changed, not least in Cambridge. As for Leslie Stephen's question about its distinctive character and the differences from Oxford, one might single out the welcome minimising of party spirit and the sturdy common-sense and appeal to evidence. This book is timely and should make many proud of their inheritance without seeking to deny its weaknesses. Few of those discussed here are read now, and even their Oxford and their German contemporaries are widely neglected, as consciousness of our historical roots grows weaker. This finger in that dyke is all the more to be welcomed.