Christianity in the Twentieth Century by Brian Stanley, Princeton, 504pp, £27 A cynical old priest of my acquaintance, long dead,

The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey, Macmillan, £20 European Christians are perhaps tempted to think of the classical past as

The Catholics by Roy Hattersley, Chatto and Windus, £25 Roy Hattersley is the son of a Catholic priest, as he

The Huntingfield Paintress by Pamela Holmes, Urbane Publications, £9 Reading this novel sent me off to the depths of rural