There was perhaps a fashion in the historiography of Britain and Ireland to say that post-reformation Catholicism had been neglected as an area of research. The five-volume series of the Oxford history of British and Irish Catholicism under the general editorship of James E. Kelly and John McCafferty has put paid to any such suggestion. Not only do the volumes represent enormous application to the history of Catholicism in Ireland and Britain, but draw on a wide range of material that scholars have produced in the last fifty years.

The work under review, meticulously edited by Liam Chambers of Mary Immaculate College Limerick, tells the story of Catholicism in those islands from the defeat of Jacobian hopes at Culloden in 1746, in whose aftermath Catholicism was, perhaps understandably severely repressed especially in the Scottish Highlands, to the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. It is a rich, multivariant, and complicated history told here in much illuminating detail in sixteen chapters. Some of the leading lights of British and Irish historiography have been assembled to recount the contours and challenges faced by the Catholic Church under the Hanoverians.

Towards the end of the volume there are excellent treatments of issues such as literature and print culture in English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh, on material culture and on music. For the last Thomas Muir shows that Church music was used as a metaphor for doctrinal truth. In addition, Aidan Bellenger paints a sensitive and richly textured picture of the contribution British and Irish Catholicism made to the expansion and development of the British Empire.

These thematic concerns are in contrast to the more chorological sections of the work. There we are treated to stimulating accounts of themes such as the Catholic community in the era of the French Revolution; Catholicism in the United Kingdom in the period 1800–1820; and a splendid discourse on the Catholic Question in the decade of Emancipation by the veteran historian of the issue Tom Bartlett. A significant and telling point that he makes is that it would be sixty-years after Emancipation before there was a majority of M.Ps. in the House of Commons from Ireland who were Catholic. At one point, however, his calculations are not precise when he asserts that from the Act of Settlement until “the late 19th century” (p. 101) the Coronation Oath remained unchanged. There was a slight modification in 1829 as to who would take the oath, and the offensive anti-Catholic aspects were not removed until 1910 at the insistence of King George V.

A nuanced and highly readable account of Catholic – Protestant relations and the extent of anti-Catholicism in the period is provided by Colin Haydon. He carefully analyses the evidence for and against the persistence of anti-Catholicism, and reminds us that conversions between the denominations caused heartbreak in many families. Not least for Charles Wesley whose son Samuel became a Catholic in 1784. Haydon willingly admits that anti-Catholicism was a feature of British public and private identity. Marianne Elliott seems content to assert that British and Irish Protestants demonstrated animadversion simply to “political” Catholicism (p. 50).

Apart from external antipathy, which conditioned it modus operandi the Catholic community existed to fulfill its own internal coherence in the period under discussion. Quite how it did so is addressed in several chapters on issues such as Catholic belief and practices, the status of religious women, and the role and importance of Catholic colleges and seminaries, largely confined to the European continent until later in the eighteenth century. Another aspect of the life of the Church was the literature it produced, not only to feed the spiritual lives of its members but also to record, as for example with Lingard’s History of England (1819–1830), a specifically Catholic understanding of England’s history. Another giant of the written word was the Presbyterian convert John Gother whose collected works were edited in sixteen volumes. In addition, Peader Ó. Muircheartaigh demonstrates that there was a thriving literature in the Gaelic tongues of those islands, and although work in Irish was the most important in terms of volume and variety, the number of readers of Scots Gaelic was much larger than for Irish. The influence of Presbyterianism was prominent in this respect.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing chapters in the work is that of Shaun Blanchard on the Catholic Enlightenment in Britain and Ireland. Here two of the most outstanding figures were Bishop John Geddes in Scotland and his English counterpart Bishop Charles Walmesley OSB, who was admitted to the Royal Society in 1750. In general, this is a topic that does need more research, especially with regard to Ireland. Although there were figures Charles O′ Connor and Capuchin friar Arthur O’Leary, some historians dispute whether we can speak of a Catholic Enlightenment in Ireland. One is reminded of the judgment of Jim Smyth that perhaps the most truly Enlightenment figure in Ireland in the eighteenth century was Wolfe Tone.

Inevitably, there is a certain amount of overlap of information between the chapters, especially those of a chronological nature. Nor do they tell us anything especially novel. However, as a whole the book is a wonderful compendium and synthesis of our knowledge of the Catholic community in Britain and Ireland between 1746 and 1829. It will no doubt in the years to come be a standard reference book for students and the general public alike. It is an enormous tribute to the labors of the editor and the vision of the general editors alike.