With this prosaic title, you might be forgiven for expecting a predictable narrative accompanied by pictures of dour, bearded reformers being executed in various unpleasant ways. In fact it contains seven essays by leading Reformation historians, with an array of fascinating pictures that are not just illustrations but integral parts of the argument.Peter Marshall’s introduction is anything but anodyne, firmly overthrowing familiar and tired interpretations of the Reformation era while warning that this volume does not assume religious conflict to be merely a convenient vehicle for political and economic tensions, insisting rather that “the actual content of ideas mattered”. All seven essays rejoice in the fact that the history of the Reformation is “untidier than