“... in peripheral areas, were not used in Bosnia proper. Bosnians then belonged to one of three Christian denominations: Orthodox, Catholic or a local institution, the Bosnian Church; but religious affiliation was not strong and was easily shed. The Bosnians did not fight one another for religious or for ethnic reasons. When they fought – and they fought ...”

“... and his fellow werewolves would assume lupine form three times a year – around Pentecost Eve, St John’s Eve and St Lucy’s Eve. Together, they would journey on foot to Hell, which could be entered through a local swamp. Hell itself was invisible to others, Thiess said, since it was beneath the ground and its entrance could be seen only by those who ...”

“... least attractive women in the congregation (at 13, this was important). The frondy dresses worn by Christian women in the late Seventies and the visionary intensity gave everything an odd resemblance to the film of Woodstock that I first saw at the age of 12 (Joe Cocker as rhapsode). I was disturbed at how many adults broke into tears during these ...”

“... 13th Apostle, a living saint, the greatest Pope of all. They were clearly in love with him. The Christian Brothers who took me in hand from the age of nine felt the same way but, being great whippers and floggers, they empathised more with his stern authority, those hard unsmiling eyes behind the glasses; in all the thousands of pictures of Pius thrust ...”

“... define a specific genre or set of modes and tones that constitute ‘the 18th-century hymn’. The Christian hymn is a difficult subject, for it always belongs to a particular church party or group, is associated with congregations and public occasions, and the success of an individual hymn is partly measured by the success of its tune. Although Davie ...”

“... player of the year would be depressingly more expensive than the best novelist.) Only once, with John Berger in 1972, has a winner been graceless enough to allude publicly to the source of the prize-money in black men’s sweat. Booker judges change every year and the one stable element is Martyn Goff, the éminence grise of the panel which chooses the ...”

“... One of the most famous questions in the vast literature of the Fathers of the Early Christian Church is Tertullian’s ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ The fusion of Greek philosophy with Jewish scripture in the formation of Christian theology was a problem for the new religion, which emerged in the Greek language through the gospel narratives and the letters of Paul ...”

“... of analysis from his student days. The influence of his father was important but subtle. For Christian Bohr had interesting philosophical views regarding ‘complementarity’ in science and human enquiry. He had seen that there were indeed questions one could ask of the world which, once asked, render certain other questions meaningless. The biologist ...”

“... for motorcycling ‘rough trade’); yes, in spite of being a very publicly self-confessed Christian, she was married to a divorced alcoholic who worked on the News of the World, but, Barbara Reynolds genuinely makes us feel – so what? This is not really the heart of Sayers or – to use Reynolds’s title – her ‘life and soul’. Indeed, reading ...”

“... contain no less than 52 tractates, some in duplicate, all of them apparently Gnostic, the majority Christian if usually unorthodox in character, a few pagan; together, they comprise a substantial Gnostic library that probably belonged to a monastic foundation. Apart from two codices, also in Coptic, which had been known to scholars for some time and which ...”

“... out to back up his argument is overwhelming. More than half of his book is a ghastly parade of Christian anti-Jewish tropes: the carnal Jew, the hypocrite Jew, the vicious Jew and so on. The New Testament lays the foundation, documenting the transformation of Christianity from a Jewish sect into a community in its own right. In part this is a story of ...”

“... in the Roman nest. It’s hardly surprising that Italy’s postwar republic was dominated by the Christian Democrats for nearly fifty years, from 1946 to 1992. In February the Council of State resolved a long-running dispute as to whether or not there should be a crucifix in every Italian classroom. A Finnish woman living in Abano Terme had bravely protested ...”

“... reading. Archer and Jockers are interested in the pumpkin plants – writers like Stephen King, John Grisham and Danielle Steel, perennial presences on the New York Times bestseller list – and what makes them sell so well. By looking only at textual features their machine has isolated the essence of the bestseller, Archer and Jockers believe, and can now ...”

“... his. The Carcanet list that houses Patricia Beer is a good deal more harmonious; but it features John Ashbery, of whom one has to say that if he is right, Beer is wrong, and vice versa. It is not a new phenomenon: eclecticism coming on as catholicity. But what results is a delusive fecundity that can’t be kept track of: with so many new starts, how to ...”

“... first book in 1901 (wrong), another who thinks it was 1894 (right). Marie Corelli’s The Master Christian is oddly transformed into The Masterful Christian (a feminist-Freudian slip?). The contents of books are sometimes botched, though whether through hurry, error, or delicacy is not clear. Gertrude Atherton’s Black ...”