It is tempting to try to place Dorothy Buxton (1881–1963) in the categories which now seem to define so much in academic life, yet her life refuses to be so easily defined and contained. She was a woman at large in a world of men (a progressive, certainly, but not quite a feminist). She was a principled humanitarian and campaigner (a leading light in the Fight the Famine Council after the First World War and then the co-founder, with her sister Eglantyne Jebb, of Save the Children). She was a figure drenched in the moral and political worlds of the broad Left (first as a Liberal and then busily at work in the early history of the Labour party). She was an editor and journalist who invented the influential compendium, Foreign Opinion, during the First World War, who published prolifically (and sympathetically) on the new Soviet state after 1917 and agitated against the National Socialist state in Germany after 1933. Buxton grew up in the Church of England but even here diverse influences were at work on her and in time she found a home, of a kind, in the Society of Friends. Moderately privileged and well-connected, she was fortunate in the devotion of a movingly supportive husband, Charles Roden Buxton, who was a significant figure in his own right and the brother of Noel Buxton. Dorothy Buxton was a progressive internationalist who understood her life as a pursuit of what she called ‘practical Christianity’. The fruits were diverse, sometimes unpredictable, often impressive. Dunstan shows clearly to what extent the creation of Save the Children was an achievement of both sisters. Later she reveals a far more obscure, but superbly successful, personal campaign to support German dentists. Not always did she prevail. Indeed, she did well to unsettle as many established figures as she did. She also showed real courage, not least in bearding Herman Göring in 1935. Petà Dunstan excavates her many British and international influences, and also her personal complexities and private relationships, with meticulous care. In sum, this book is certainly a valuable contribution to the history of twentieth-century British religion, inviting a new assessment of what has been for too long a neglected life and encouraging some revision of existing perspectives. Above all it brings to life the religious, moral and idealistic milieu in which so many British Christians lived, worked and had their being in this distinctive period.