The sections on the Church Of England’s battles with Margaret Thatcher alone are worth the less successful diversions into polemic: he’s prone to suddenly suggesting the police ‘don’t like anyone who is different from them’.
A book which tries to take our 21st-century religious pulse but which also explores why we’ve lost respect for authority could descend into a paean for a lost age but Moreton steers clear of conservative nostalgia. He finds himself on unsure ground when trying to discuss the nebulous ‘new soul’ of Britain but how scary would it be if one person really knew who we all were and what we believed?”