Trevor Beeson was formerly Canon of Westminster and then Dean of Winchester and in this book he looks back at church life since his ordination in 1951. The book is a slightly odd mixture of memoir, history, comment and occasional attempts at humour. It is in no way a thorough history of the church in the last five decades but instead reads more like an autobiography with vignettes of events in Anglicanism and some random oddities thrown in, usually in the form of quotations from newspapers. The book focuses on each of the five decades from the 50s to the 90s although the text occasionally jumps around a little when following particular characters. The overall feel of this book was rather like a roll-call of bishops and archbishops with the author's personal commentary on their successes/failures, interspersed with some heart-warming and encouraging stories of parish priests in ministry. It was difficult, when reading this book, to get a handle on the shape of the author's own ministry, although he was apparently involved in several significant events over this period. The unexpected message I took with me, when finishing this book, is that to be a bishop or archbishop is rather bad for one's health and that the Anglican church is really rather an oddity in today's world with its seemingly old-fashioned structures, terminology and mindset. It was hard to escape the overall gloomy prospect for the church with the figures presented showing the decline in membership and in ordinands over the fifty years and the divisions over issues such as women priests and homosexuality. However it was heart-warming to read of some of the successes in ministry, although disappointing that these seemed rather the exception than the norm.