The latest review of my book on Michael Ramsey is now in, this time in the online Reviews in History, to which I myself have frequently contributed. It is by Sam Brewitt-Taylor of Lincoln College Oxford, to whom my thanks are due for an engaged, critical and constructive review.

I am of course very pleased that the reviewer thinks that the book:

‘is the best introduction to Michael Ramsey’s archiepiscopacy at Canterbury currently available, and should be read by everyone interested in the state of the Church of England in the 1960s. …. As a report from the archives, The Shape of the Church is highly successful. It is eminently readable, it covers a very good range of issues, and it does so using an excellent level of detail. It makes a valuable contribution to a complicated subject, and it opens up some of the Ramsey archive to a wider readership. It should certainly be included in relevant undergraduate and graduate reading lists…. a fine addition to the literature.‘

Brewitt-Taylor makes a number of detailed criticisms, which are (as he states) suggestions for further work in situating Ramsey in his historical context. These are all welcome, and I may well return to them in print at a later date.