Writing my most recent book felt rather like going on a pilgrimage. The theme of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, which came out earlier this month, is that assumptions which saturate Western society, and which many – perhaps the majority – tend these days to attribute to “human nature”, in fact derive almost exclusively from our Christian past. My ambition in writing the book was to trace the course of what one Christian, back in the 3rd century AD, termed “the flood-tide of Christ”: how the belief that the Son of the one God of the Jews had been tortured to death on a cross came to be so enduringly and widely held that today most of us in the West are dulled to just how scandalous it originally was. Much as a pilgrimage might, the task of tracing a revolution over the course of 2,500 years obliged me to follow a long and winding road. It provided me with many moments for deep reflection, took me to many shrines along the way, and sites of martyrdom, and famous cathedrals and churches, and prompted me to read deeply in the great heritage of Christian writings. By the end of it I felt both the profound sense of fulfilment that any pilgrimage worth its salt will inspire in those who undertake it, and very, very tired.