Anna Della Subin

Writer

Why would anyone want to worship Prince Philip? In her subversive and often entertaining book Accidental

Gods, Anna Della Subin traces the tangled history of men who end up being granted divine status against their will. Often the story involves colonial conquest, with the defeated people turning the (usually) white male hero into a god as a form of obeisance but also covert resistance. Oppressed people in Jamaica read a 1931 National Geographic article about the crowning of Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and took him for a “black divine.” Subin’s book has many lessons we can learn about the hero-worship of leaders in our current strongman age. Putin the Eternal, anyone?