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Law and Religion in Ireland, 1700–1970Edited by Kevin Costello and Niamh Howlin Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2021, xiii + 384 + index (eBook £87.50), ISBN: 978-3-030-74373-4

As a long-time historian of the long nineteenth century, and of the legal history of church-state relations in that period, and as an erstwhile and somewhatmore recent student of the legal history of the British Empire, the history of law and religion in Ireland holds an enduring if bemusing fascination forme. It is a history intertwined with that of Britain, a history which occasionally plays a key role in pivotal moments in the story of the Church of England, as in 1833, but it is a history about which, I fear, many ecclesiastical and legal historians know too little. Ireland is, or was, to historians such as me, something of an enigma. Its position is confusing, being neither that of a colony nor that of a unified part of the metropole. Not the least charm of this long overdue volume is that when, having exercised the prerogative of the book reviews editor to have first dibs on any of the new volumes to come my way, I opened up the PDF file (printed review copies being increasingly hard to come by in these times) and I was reassured immediately to learn that the legal history of Ireland is largely bereft of accounts of the history of law and religion. So, evidently, not only had I not stupidly missed some vast body of literature to which I should have before now had reference, but my ignorance was about to be enlightened. For this volume, which began life at a Legal History Research Group event at University College Dublin in 2017, is concerned with ‘that series of legal events which make up some of the principal episodes in the legal history of religion in Ireland’ (p 2). Moreover, reading on considerably further, I found that my own sense of bafflement at Ireland’s place in the British Empire, was shared by no less a scholar than the late, and much missed Keith Robbins, who in his own contribution to this volume described Victoria’s United Kingdom as exhibiting a ‘puzzling and fluctuating picture of integration and diversity’ (p 241) and Ireland as ‘neither fully integrated nor completely “colonial”’ (p 245). So, in having pondered such things I was in good (the best) company, and I was now able to delve into these mysteries through the collected endeavours of a fine cadre of legal historians. Hurrah! The sense of excitement and possibility which the publicity notice for this volume sparked in me was not unfounded. It is a work of rare breadth, with a uniformly astute and helpful sense of its place in, and contribution to, the existing literature, and a keen eye to avenues for future research and (2022) 24 Ecc LJ 249–260 © Ecclesiastical Law Society, 2022