The English Soul

The English Soul surveys the development of Christianity in England across roughly fourteen centuries. Beginning with the Anglo-Saxon church, it moves through medieval monastic and mystical traditions, the Reformation and the English Bible, Puritanism and dissent, evangelical revival, Victorian faith and doubt, and the pressures of secularisation in the modern age.

Ackroyd organises the history around theologians, rulers, mystics, poets and preachers whose beliefs changed English religious life. The book examines the church’s relationship with the state and national identity while also acknowledging internal conflict, nonconformity, atheism and the influence of other faiths on contemporary England.