‘Ridiculously enjoyable’ Tom Holland
A Book of the Year for The Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History Magazine
The ‘Mermaid of Morwenstow’ excommunicated a cat for mousing on a Sunday. When he was late for a service, Bishop Lancelot Fleming commandeered a Navy helicopter. ‘Mad Jack’ swapped his surplice for leopard skin and insisted on being carried around in a coffin. And then there was the man who, like Noah’s evil twin, tried to eat one of each of God’s creatures…
In spite of all this they saw the church as their true calling. These portraits reveal the Anglican church in all its colourful madness.
‘One of the best Christmas books of the past few years... both hilarious and unusually elegant in conception and execution.’
‘Eye-popping tales of lunacy, debauchery and depravity…Butler-Gallie has done a splendid job presenting a smorgasbord of most peculiar parsons.’
‘We have…always kept a special haven for oddballs in the Church of England, as Fergus Butler-Gallie demonstrates in this entertaining compendium…Their foibles cover all bases from absentmindedness to epic drunkenness…I’m glad I read this one. It’s a lot of fun.’
‘Entertainingly erudite…But it is also a surprisingly profound work…For all its mischief, Butler-Gallie’s work of lightly worn erudition is a paean to a great English institution, finely tuned to the temper of its representatives, good, bad and indifferent. We should treasure it more.’
