Just over three years ago I wrote a piece for the Herald called “The Battle of the Papal Biographers” (March 2021). In it I noted that since 2013 there had been at least eight books written about Pope Francis in English, with others on the way. About one a year seems a pretty impressive run rate. Many authors have been complimentary about Pope Francis and his priorities; Christopher Lamb, Austen Ivereigh, Paul Vallely, Jimmy Burns and John Cornwell among them. Others have taken a more critical view; Henry Sire’s The Dictator Pope of 2017 is a significant outlier which, although anomalous, deserves to be reckoned with alongside the rest.