both the lobes and the thermal environment. In particular, to avoid the inverse-Compton emission being dominated by thermal bremsstrahlung (cf. @hc10) we need to select objects that are powerful, close and inhabit relatively poor environments.

In this paper we study the nearby, powerful radio galaxy 3C452. 3C452 is an FRII radio galaxy which has a symmetrical double-lobe morphology and a relatively uniform surface brightness distribution [@bblprs92]; its largest angular size is $\sim 5$ arcmin, which at its redshift of 0.0811 corresponds to a projected linear size of $\sim 450$ kpc. Images from the [*Hubble Space Telescope*]{} and various sky surveys (such as 2MASS) suggest that the environment is a poor group, with a clear excess of galaxies within the instrument’s field of view; however, group membership has not been confirmed spectroscopically for any of the nearby galaxies.

@itmismma02 discussed [*Chandra*]{} observations of 3C452, showing that there is clear inverse-Compton emission from the lobes. However, their observations were not sensitive enough to make measurements of the properties of any extended thermal environment. In this paper we describe the results of a deep [*XMM-Newton*]{} observation of 3C452. [*XMM-Newton’s*]{} higher sensitivity and larger field of view when compared to [*Chandra*]{} allow us to 