This is now the best biography we have of the man who acted as Master of Ceremonies at Bath during the first half of the eighteenth century, and who has become one of the iconic figure of Georgian Britain. The first chapter reconstructs what little is known of the early life of Nash, before summarising the history of the spa up until 1700. Chapter 2 outlines the already thriving character of Bath (something not always acknowledged) at the time of Nash's arrival in about 1705, and concludes that ‘he appeared to be the right person in the right place at the right time’. The next three chapters are the core of the book, containing the author's most original research and insights, as they cover Nash's triple role as ‘regulator of diversions’, ‘overseer of the marriage market’ and ‘moderator of disputes at play’. Chapters six and seven examine the physical development of Bath between the 1720s and 1750s, focusing especially on the contribution of the architect John Wood, and chapter eight surveys the religious, medical and charitable scene. The final two chapters chart the inexorable decline of the great man in the final two decades before his death in 1761, and then the rise of his reputation as his successors found he was an impossible act to follow; as Eglin aptly puts it, ‘Death … can be a good career move’. This is a very well written study. The author has a turn of phrase that makes the book a pleasure to read. Eglin wears his scholarship lightly but the conclusions are based on considerable research in the manuscript and printed primary sources. There is also much insight and intelligent comment here, not least when he applies anthropological concepts to understand phenomena such as dancing, gambling and the marriage market. What we have is a very modern biography that avoids the moralising or hagiography of many previous studies, and brings an acute awareness of the self-invented quality of Nash's life. Yet any biographer of Nash faces a major—perhaps insurmountable—problem; the sheer dearth of primary sources that deal directly with the man himself. Outside a few items published immediately after Nash's death (primarily Goldsmith's biography), and fragmentary references that can be recovered from contemporary correspondence and poems (and Eglin has been assiduous in finding these), little material survives out of which to construct a life. The consequence is that the biographies published of Nash have tended to include a good deal of conjecture, and to make unverifiable and inflated claims as to his importance. Elgin is too good a historian to fall into this trap. Nonetheless, there are substantial sections of the book which have little directly to do with Nash. Chapters six and seven, for example, contain scarcely any mention of the Master of Ceremonies, and the references in chapter eight are slim. Context is undoubtedly of great importance in understanding Nash's role in the extraordinary development of the spa. Still, the risk in including too much general material is that, intentionally or otherwise, the Master of Ceremonies begins to be seen as an all pervasive force instigating and orchestrating the entire Bath project. Moreover, there is a risk of overplaying the image of the ‘King of Bath’. It is true that Nash's position was not ‘legitimated by the formal consent of the Company, the Corporation of Bath, or anyone else’, and that in many respects he ‘owed his position to little other than the sheer effrontery connoted by period usage of the term “assurance”’ (p. 13). Yet it is surely the case that his authority depended ultimately upon the Company (the name given to the visitors, effectively Britain's ruling elite), who could make and break him, puffing his persona—and tolerating his arrogance—so long as it served their purposes, scorning him when he lost their trust, when infirmity caught up with him, and when the changing nature of the Company itself required a different type of master of ceremonies. The fragility of Nash's power is implied in the title of Eglin's book, which provides a subtle and stimulating introduction to, and analysis of, this most illusive of Britain's Georgian celebrities and cities.