At Easter, thoughts turn to the origins of Christianity, a faith that has inspired countless great books.
Here are just a few of them.
The Robe
Lloyd C Douglas
It could also have been titled After the Crucifixion, because this novel, published in 1942, looked at what happened to Jesus Christ's garments after his death. This former minister'sbestseller was filmed with Richard Burton in the lead role of the tribune, Marcellus Gallio, whose life is changed by events.
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
The recollections of an elderly American pastor who knows he has not long to live, it is written for the benefit of his young son. Robinson's powerful story of generations of belief, and its different expression, won the Pulitzer prize. She followed it with two sequels, Home and Lila, the name of the pastor's young and barely educated wife, whom he marries in old age.
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
In the late 1950s, an American missionary takes his family of wife and four girls to the Belgian Congo. There, they slowly begin to appreciate the culture of the Congolese, all that is except the missionary himself, whose blinkered outlook results in tragedy.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C S Lewis
Lewis made no attempt to mask his Christian convictions in this story of four children discovering a frozen and unhappy land where the fate of Aslan, the mighty but tender-hearted lion, is a moving retelling of the Easter story.
The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan
In this 17th-century allegory, Bunyan recounts the trials of a man who was trying to be a good Christian, but was tempted on every side as he made his journey towards the Celestial City. En route he meets the likes of Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, and the far from companionable demons of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
The Testament of Gideon Mack
James Robertson
The Kirk minister at the heart of Robertson's modern tale is not your average clergyman, although he does seem so at first. Thoughtful, entertaining fiction that broaches the intractable difficulties of faith.
Cloud Howe
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
In the second of the Scots Quair trilogy, Chris Guthrie has married Church of Scotland minister, Robert Colquhoun. Grassic Gibbon treats her idealistic new husband cruelly, the man's dreams of a fairer society crushed as much by the author's dislike of the church as by the locals' mistrust of their pastor.
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
Arguably the best novel about the clergy yet written, this tender and droll novel about an exceptionally good-hearted church warden is gently satirical about the politics of the Anglican church, without losing sight of the genuine sweetness of a cleric who was not interested in self-gain.
The Cadfael Chronicles
Ellis Peters
Set in 12th-century England, these historical crime novels are an ecclesiastical delight, with Brother Cadfael acting as a medieval Poirot, though blessedly less pompous.
The Abbess of Crewe, by Muriel Spark
One of Spark's most comic and barbed novels, it is set in a nunnery where the rigged election of the new abbess looks set to cause problems. For those familiar with church politics this allegory of the Watergate scandal is both hilarious and scarily perceptive.
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