“... words from a Third Programme broadcast – ‘unconscious satires’ of Mary Shelley’s father William Godwin’s reforming ‘brand of humanism’. A postwar ideal of ‘ethical, germ-free citizens’ became a bit of a bugbear. ‘The Ballad of the Fanfarlo’, a narrative poem written during an access of Baudelairean dandyism ‘c.1951’, is filled with ...”

“... Sir William Jones, the Enlightenment polymath who established the shared origins of Indo-European languages and cultures, certainly didn’t lack a capacity for big vision. But he was also keen on details, with no time for broad-brush talk about the seven ages of man. He was 47 – still in Jaques’s fifth age (‘And then the justice … with eyes severe’) – when he died in 1794, in the fancy Calcutta suburb of Garden Reach ...”

“... to foist their belief systems on the Indians. As Porter points out, the East India Company banned Christian missionaries from operating in the subcontinent. All the same, millions of Indians continued to believe that Christianisation and the destruction of their caste were part of the long-term plan. That fatal misunderstanding was among the underlying causes ...”

“... had reason to speak out. It would be going too far to say that 11 September undid centuries of Christian teaching and made revenge respectable again, just as William Harris is over the top when he opines: ‘In the United States, views about revenge seem to have sunk to a level appropriate to a neolithic village.’ But ...”

“... hell – where the fires would keep burning for as long as there were sinners for incineration. In William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), which unearths utopia in 21st-century Hammersmith, the Houses of Parliament have been repurposed as a store for dung, while in Utopia itself, Thomas More specifies that Utopians use gold, which is abundant, for chamber ...”

“... curios, the beached experiments, the gatherers of dust: the Latin translation of Paradise Lost by William Hogg, the versions of Spenser’s Shepeardes Calender by Theodore Bathurst and John Dove (both of which experiment vigorously with Latin metrical form), the stately Latin transformation of Absalom and Achitophel by Francis Atterbury. David Money’s ...”

“... uncovered an ancient discussion of male menstruation. The idea of male menstruation is part of the Christian tradition of seeing the Jew as inherently, biologically different. Thomas de Cantimpré, the 13th-century anatomist, calling on St Augustine as his authority, presented the first ‘scientific’ statement of this phenomenon. Male Jews, he ...”

“... within the closed circle of their fellow initiates, but they also followed F.D. Maurice, the Christian Socialist and an Apostle of an earlier generation, in thinking it wrong to unsettle other people by too much dwelling on one’s private misgivings. In the end, Sidgwick resigned his fellowship shortly before the repeal of the Test Act made the issue ...”

“... who conceive of history as theatrical spectacle. Years ago Hill, characterising the culture of Christian Nonconformists in the early 18th century, remarked contemptuously: ‘The cosmic battles which Milton and Bunyan depicted were succeeded by sterile controversies over deism and unitarianism.’ There unmistakably we encounter the historian as ...”

“... her martyr’s smile. The difference between them is seen in terms of gold: Aunt Thelma’s is ‘Christian gold, intangible as a halo’; Aunt Zita’s is solid and pagan. Inevitably she arouses resentment in the villagers, and the main part of the story, ‘North’, ends with a ritual burning before the family go south. This summary may make the book sound ...”

“... through the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Scots cleric and enlightened historian William Robertson traced the operation in human history of a superintending providence working indirectly through natural secondary causes: ‘The Supreme Being conducteth all his operations by general laws.’ Robertson’s famous sermon, The Situation of the ...”

“... pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. In 1658, the French pilgrim Jean de Thévenot described Christian tattooists in Jerusalem using wooden blocks to stamp religious symbols – often crosses – onto the skin of visitors before pricking in the ink:They have several wooden moulds, of which you may choose that which pleases you best, then they fill it ...”

“... that views such as his have an eminent pedigree within the medical profession itself. The great William Hunter, doyen of the anatomy teachers of 18th-century London, delighted in offering his students a peculiarly chilling vision of the medic’s mentality. Surgeons, he told them, were eaten up with ‘emulation and contention’, operating in a ...”

“... in 1714, he tried to get an Act of Parliament passed declaring that Rome was a false Church. Under William III, Newton became first Warden and then Master of the Mint, offices which had hitherto been virtual sinecures. Newton turned them to important uses, including the establishment of the gold standard, which, Manuel wrily notes, ‘lasted just about as long ...”

“... and the violation of spaces activists claimed as sanctuary – resonates profoundly with Christian martyrdom, as well as a long tradition of symbolically charged political provocations and resistance.This tradition endures: in the US, seven states and more than three dozen cities now claim sanctuary status, refusing to cooperate with requests from ...”