In an acerbic review of Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English national Church: the dilemmas of an erastian reformer (Aldershot 2006), the late Brett Usher expressed the hope that the approaching 450th anniversary of the publication of Bishop Jewel's Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London 1562) would inspire a book more worthy of the subject (this Journal lix [2008], 501–11). Although this collection of wide-ranging and useful essays is not quite the tome that Usher evidently had in mind, it does none the less indicate that Jewel studies remain alive and well. Lucy Wooding, in her introduction, explains the origins of the present volume in a 2014 conference held in Salisbury ‘that sought to bring together a range of scholars from different disciplines who were interested in Jewel's work, reputation and legacy’ (p. 5). The rationale for choosing 2014 rather than 2012 was that 1564 was the date of publication of the translation into English of the Apologia by Anne Bacon (née Cooke). The resulting book is divided into two parts: ‘Theologian, Polemicist and Apologist’ and ‘Impact and Legacy’. There are fifteen essays, six provided between them by the three editors. Angela Ranson tackles the ‘early life’ of Jewel, his famous controversy with Thomas Harding and the Jacobean legacy. André Gazal deals with Jewel as ‘homiletical theologian’ and his ‘concept of heresy’, while Sarah Bastow provides a comparative piece about Jewel's near contemporary and fellow Marian exile Edwin Sandys. Torrance Kirby considers the preaching of Jewel at Paul's Cross in the context of an ‘emerging public sphere’. Alice Ferron focuses on Anne Bacon both as the translator of Jewel and the wife of Nicholas Bacon. Ian Atherton discusses the attitude towards cathedrals of early English Protestants, such as Jewel, and Aislinn Muller looks afresh at the papal excommunication of Queen Elizabeth. Two essays, by Paul Dominiak and W. Bradford Littlejohn respectively, explore aspects of the intellectual relationship between Jewel and Richard Hooker. Joshua Rodda analyses what he calls ‘the role of the antagonist in the English Church’ of Jewel's day and Paul A. Hartog writes about ‘English episcopacy, Ignatian authenticity, and the rise of critical patristic scholarship’. Lastly Andrew Atherstone rounds off the volume with a twentieth-century epilogue concerning ‘The Bishop Jewel Society at Oxford University, 1947–1975’, a group of Evangelicals in the business among other things of ‘training soldiers for Christ’. This concluding essay is furthermore a reminder that Bishop Jewel has come to be identified with a particular religious strand within the Church of England. Here it is also important to note that Jewel the ‘apologist’ can be found complaining in 1559, to his mentor and friend Peter Martyr, about the ‘leaden mediocrity’ of the emerging Elizabethan Church (Zurich letters, Cambridge 1842, i. 23). His comment is especially striking given that the idea of a ‘golden mean’ was central to the thinking of Nicholas Bacon – husband of the more Puritan-inclined Anne. Again Archbishop Sandys, in his will of 1587, was to regret the lack of further reform as regards ‘rites and ceremonies’ (Sermons of Edwin Sandys, ed. John Ayre, Cambridge 1841, 448). Nor is this the only missing dimension, since there is evidence that Jewel shared in the radical political thinking of other Marian exiles. Finally it has to be said that these essays vary considerably in quality; some of them would certainly have benefitted from more rigorous editing and indeed proof correction.