This handsome facsimile edition of Trollope’s insightful and entertaining clerical portraits, introduced by Michael Mayne and with charming illustrations by David Eccles, is of wonderful entertainment. The great Victorian novelist scored his first popular successes with The Warden and Barchester Towers. He went on to write four more novels in the Barsetshire Chronicles series, which he is said to have conceived while wandering round Salisbury cathedral on a summer evening. These gentle but often pointed sketches of evangelicals and high church vicars, of bishops and parish clergy, first appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette. They still tease and resonate as well as amuse today, and their reappearance in this new edition will deepen our understanding of the work of one of the great English novelists.