Young Harry Pope, we are informed by the author of this lively and fascinating study of the man, did not shine at the Oratory school in athletics, ‘though midway through his school career he came first in the obstacle race'. The shadow of coming events was then already cast; for this man, who as Father Hugh Pope, O.P., became the leading Scripture scholar in England for many years, did in fact in the middle of his career win the obstacle race set by the modernist attack on the Word of God. Fr Mulvey shows how this race was won first interiorly by bringing Father Hugh to the placid yet pungent holiness which all could recognize in the charming fatherly Dominican from the 1920's onwards. It was surely a clear case of divine purification, call it a ‘dark night’ if you will, leading to a peaceful unity and wholeness of life in God. And that race was won, inevitably, before the victory was recognized by the world outside.