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“... The publication of Patrick Collinson’s The Religion of Protestants is a stirring event in the rediscovery of Early Modern England. Unmistakably the work of a historian who has reflected on his subject for the better part of a working lifetime, the book consists of six wide-ranging essays which were originally delivered as the Ford Lectures when Professor Collinson visited Oxford in 1979, and which have now been revised, expanded and tightened – although the speculative tone of the lecture-hall has been appropriately retained ...”

“... to be a camera shaped like St Paul’s. The City congregation is gathered and the Bishop (from ‘the Diocese of Deference’), having already ‘been round with the wafer course’, is now proffering a chalice filled with the ‘sweet syrup’ of ‘class sentiment’ while conformity coos overhead. Soon enough the dreamer finds himself in ...”

“... people thought that they were living in the Last Days, expecting the imminent end of the world. Bishop Hugh Latimer, preaching before Edward VI, told him: ‘We know by scripture and all learned men affirm the same, that the world was made to endure six thousand years,’ of which 5552 had already passed. As our guide, MacCulloch is in the optimum position ...”

“... Here are two books about the relationship of the English to their past. According to Patrick Wright, England is a reactionary society burdened by a false mystique of national identity. To dissolve that mystique must be one of the first priorities of democratic socialists in establishing an alternative society with a renewed faith in its capacity for progress ...”

“... with Rome. Only one did so outspokenly – and he was rewarded by a martyr’s death. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was executed in June 1535 for refusing (like Thomas More) to take the oath of succession. He was prepared to swear to the succession itself, which he believed that King and nobles were entitled to change, but was unwilling to swear to the ...”

“... His criterion of selection is simply that a building must have been, or become, the seat of a bishop. Thus St Albans and Peterborough, Norman abbeys ‘episcopalised’ respectively in 1877 and 1541, get in, but Fountains and even Hexham do not; Manchester, Derby and Blackburn are admitted, but St Mary Redcliffe or Lavenham are not. Such a criterion may ...”

“... as unpleasant as that. But he could have been the target of Robert Browning’s jibe (in ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’) about ‘that dear middle-age these noodles praise’, when, ‘you’ll say, once all believed,’ from Henry VIII to the ploughman with his paternoster. So it was not a book above and beyond criticism. How ‘traditional’ was ...”

“... it had been applied to the human race by W.C. Wells in 1813, and extended to other species by Patrick Matthew in 1831. Darwin hoped, however, to do some service to science by bringing these elements together in a single arc of argument, supported by masses of detailed observations. In the event he never completed the ‘big book’, but in 1859 he ...”

“... us and, for some, that will be a greater appeal. Most readers, though, will react like Elizabeth Bishop: And here I must confess (and I imagine most of your contemporaries would confess the same thing) that I am green with envy of your kind of assurance. I feel I could write in as much detail about my Uncle Artie, say, – but what would be the ...”

“... and children. The most charismatic name to survive this ill-documented period is that of Saint Patrick, who left texts, no less precious for being written in imperfect Latin, that cast some brilliant shafts of light on a turbulent but expanding Church. He tells us the name of his home town, ‘Bannavemtaberniae’, the identity of which has provoked much ...”

“... I, the angry silence of Henry II at Woodstock, unable to bring himself to speak to a recalcitrant bishop. These are not just colourful beads of anecdote strung on the thread of narrative: they are part and parcel of the author’s investigation of his chosen themes. The world of Early Medieval Europe occasionally looms up in the modern imagination, sometimes ...”

“... when this volume begins, Betjeman was feeling the anxiety of the ageing writer, well expressed by Patrick Kavanagh, a friend of his from wartime Dublin: Give us another poem, he said Or they will think your muse is dead; Another middle-aged departure Of Apollo from the trade of archer. In January 1960 Evelyn Waugh declared that he and Betjeman, along with ...”

“... legends about Irish saints fasting against God, including one about the chief of them all, St Patrick, which presents him as refusing to descend from his now-famous mountain, Croagh Patrick, until God had agreed to all his admirable demands on behalf of his beloved Irish converts. After that, one fasted for God, and ...”

“... Catholic. Starkey finds himself in defensive contention with Elizabeth’s Victorian biographer, Bishop Mandell Creighton, who tut-tutted his disapproval of these pretences. The implication is that Creighton was fortunate not to have had to live in the 16th century. There were also lessons in personal aggrandisement, as Elizabeth exploited the rare ...”

“... which he wrote with David Bownes. But to say that Hoyle shares with other historians what Bishop Sheppard of Liverpool called a bias, if not towards the poor then towards the people, a trendy bias, is not to say that he is wrong, or even that his history is prejudicial. On the contrary, what he is offering is not unsubstantiated opinion but a ...”