I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood.

My wife tells me I should check out 'Downton Abbey', but I gather that series might be almost too intense for my temperate nature.

These were bronze age people and they had a pantheon of gods that they thought controlled their world.

Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian.

For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing.

I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.