This is a meticulously researched and very readable study of the Capuchin friars. Temple explores the lived experience of the Franciscan calling to priesthood and brotherhood through changing circumstances and in locations as different as Peckham south London, the industrialising villages of north Wales and the hop fields of Kent, carefully contextualising each place and era in broader Catholic and British history. The study makes a particular contribution to the history of Catholicism in Wales but more broadly illuminates how people and places at the social and geographical 'peripheries' of Britain were connected into the global Church through this transnational religious order. Written with full access to Capuchin archives, Radical Poverty is a pioneering study in the largely unexplored history of male religious institutes in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.

Susan O'Brien, Catholic Record Society, UK

Temple has recovered from scattered and diverse archival sources the history of one of 19th and 20th century Britain's most dynamic and influential groups of Catholic men. This is completely new and also completely accessible to those interested - not just in Catholicism - but in the social and political ferment that made the vocational voluntarism of groups like the Capuchins so essential to the shaping of modern British society.

John McCafferty, University College Dublin, Ireland

Previously forgotten in accounts of the period, Temple has unearthed the story of the Capuchins in Britain through extensive research in a wide range of archives. What he has discovered is not only an influential movement within the revival of Catholicism in Britain, but one deeply committed to the social activism that underpinned society more generally. Placing the Capuchins' activities in a domestic and international context, Temple's groundbreaking work restores them to the wider story.

James E. Kelly, Durham University, UK

Through the lens of the history of the Capuchins, Catholicism in modern Britain is seen with fresh eyes. This volume recovers the history of Catholicism in the peripheries of Britain, paying noteworthy attention to Wales, which was previously a lacuna in Catholic studies. It is a national history, embedded in the local but also engaging with the global relationship with the Holy See and beyond. Its richness lies in rigorous research, based on the wealth of archival evidence. This is an exciting new study that fills a critical gap in the historical literature of male religious life.

Carmen M. Mangion, Birkbeck, University of London, UK