I took myself off on a jaunt through London last month, following a favourite route through two cities (the other being Westminster) which takes in plenty of interesting old things for those with eyes to see. I started at the Mithraeum, a pagan temple dedicated to the cult of Mithras, deep under the Bloomberg building next to Cannon Street Station.
I always think that when the phrase “Britain is a Christian country” gets bandied round – very often by non-churchgoers, it seems – it makes it sound as though Christianity was some kind of default option for the nation, starting with a series of unlikely, if pious, legends. “And was the Holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen?”
