‘What! to come here a stranger, a young, unknown, and unfriended stranger, and tell us, in the name of the bishop his master, that we are ignorant of our duties, old-fashioned, and useless!’ As the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed, the question of his succession arises. Soon a pitched battle has broken out between traditionalists and reformers, including the evangelical Dr Proudie, his terrifying wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope. As the plotting and backstabbing reach unholy proportions, they threaten to shake the cathedral city of Barchester to its foundations. Trollope’s comic masterpiece is one of the best-loved novels in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which captured the rapidly-changing provincial society of nineteenth-century England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterisation.