Adrian Hastings, a Roman Catholic who at one time was active in the priesthood, has given us an informative, entertaining and valuable summation of the career of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie (1921-2000). The book details Runcie's education, his upbringing, his Anglo-Catholicism, and his attempts while at Canterbury to achieve a rapprochement with Rome. There is a section containing nine of Archbishop Runcie's more memorable sermons, on everything from the Resurrection to the Falklands conflict to the Queen Mum's birthday. Runcie's humour is evident from ample anecdotal evidence.

This book is also a chronicle of Runcie's attempt to navigate between the shoals of tradition and modernism, with especial attention to the impending go-ahead to the ordination of women (which occurred officially only during the enthronement of Dr Runcie's successor at Lambeth, Archbishop Carey). While wary of some of the more extreme manifestations o!f modernism, Runcie can do little to stop the changes, and is deplored for it in scathing terms by a former student turned critic, Gareth Bennett.

Hastings' tone is respectful toward his subject. His admiration for Dr Runcie is evident. However, the book is marred by seeming hastily put together, written in a breezy, occasionally sardonic tone, and blighted by several cantankerous and cranky references to the current Bishop of Rome, Pope John Paul II. Nonetheless, this reviewer, a non-Anglican eager to learn about one of Anglicanism's most prominent figures in the last quarter-century, found the biography to be, for the most part commendable. (Perhaps Jonathan Mantle's ampler biography, entitled "Archbishop," could be read in conjunction with Hastings' informative, but perhaps not definitive, portrait.)