There is now a new study to place alongside Philip Coupland's admirable Britannia, Europa and Christendom: British Christians and European integration (2007). Here Lucian Leustean examines the convergence between the post-war ecumenical movement and the purposeful establishment of a new generation of European institutions which came to life in the context of political, social and economic reconstruction after 1945. He acknowledges how firmly the European idea, in all its practical expressions, stood on secular ground, and how deep was the gulf between the pressing, active world of the politicians and economists and the priorities of the leaders of the Churches across the continent. But he also demonstrates how profoundly a number of these constructive and idealistic politicians were influenced by religious ideals and how thoroughly some church figures were affected by the moral force of their debates. He begins with the German anti-Nazi Adam von Trott, and although this might not serve as the most robust premise for what follows the connection shows how powerfully the eloquence of wartime idealism abided in the visions of the new era. Indeed, the idea of Europe, and the belief in its historical, philosophical and moral unity, was one in which many diverse people had a stake of some kind. Inevitably, the Cold War dominated the agenda, and an issue like German rearmament exposed not a few of the defining dilemmas of the new age. At the same time the impressive determination which lay behind the Schuman Plan, the European Coal and Steel Community and other successive enterprises shows itself vividly here and Leustean is able to retrieve and examine the many contributions which were made to these great enterprises by a striking number of ecumenical agencies and small (and often short-lived) offices. Much of the book rests solidly on a close reading of many reports, conferences and exchanges of opinion, all thoroughly documented but hitherto rarely consulted by historians who have been content to look in other directions. The many persevering efforts of constructive idealists like Paul Abrecht, André Philip and Helmut von Verschuer come busily to life while others – like the British Sir Kenneth Grubb – announce shades of doubt or ambiguity. It is clear that such essentially oligarchic, even bureaucratic, figures and their modest agencies could not ‘mobilise’ a wider body of Christian opinion behind the movement for European unity. They enjoyed too thin a patronage from their own Churches, and too weak a connection to their wider constituencies. But what they achieved was far from negligible. Much of the weight falls on the Protestant Churches, but the significance of the office which the Catholic Church briefly maintained at the Council of Europe between 1950 and 1952 is duly observed and the Vatican is increasingly drawn in until it is blocked by the French government of de Gaulle. Altogether, the German Evangelical Church was both temperamentally and financially best-equipped to invest in such labours, and one is left to wonder how much of a subject the historian might have without this. Leustean distinguishes, debatably, between Protestant and Anglican Churches and it is difficult not to sense that the Anglicans look out of their depth in these waters. But he also shows how the whole European enterprise created new opportunities for Protestants and Catholics to collaborate, particularly between 1968 and 1979. In his sage epilogue Leustean observes a meeting between the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, and an imposing assortment of church leaders from across the continent in November 1990. Here Delors remarks that the Commission lacks a ‘heart and a soul’ and looks to the Churches to cooperate with it to find such a thing and give it meaning. In reply the archbishop of York blandly asks what he had in mind? The response is all too suggestive. This careful, astutely-judged book gives the contemporary church historian much to value, and much reason to be grateful.