The condemnation of Modernism by Pope Pius X in 1907 shook Roman Catholic theology to its foundations, and the reverberations of that shock continue to unsettle Catholicism. Foremost among those implicated was the Jesuit George Tyrrell, who had already been dismissed from his Order and was subsequently excommunicated. When he died, less than two years later, he was refused Catholic burial.

Tyrrell's combative brilliance, his ability to touch creatively every major theological issue of the early twentieth century, his compassion as a pastoral counsellor, and his mordant wit made him endlessly fascinating to his contemporaries; admirable and pathetic to his friends; fearful and irresponsible to his enemies. Maude Petre's massive biography has stood for seventy years as the standard account of his life. Now that material drawn from Jesuit archives, diocesan records and previously unpublished correspondence has become available, the story of Tyrrell's life can be told afresh.