"The success . . . of the most influential framework for making sense of human existence that has ever existed always depended on people like my Godmother: people who saw in the succession of one generation by another something more than merely the way of all the earth . . .

"As a Christian, . . . she had the hope of eternal life. It was a faith that she had received from her mother, who had received it in turn from her parents. . . . And this was the tradition that my Godmother passed on to me."

Tom Holland in Dominion