It’s impossible to read this fascinating account of the Pilgrim Fathers without modern-day parallels springing up at you like a Pequod deer-trap. In 1621, England was bitterly divided between those who were desperate to remain Catholic, moderate Protestants who wanted a soft exit from Catholicism, and hard-line Calvinists who thought the Government damned by ­compromise. Agricultural enclosures and the exploitation of the New World had made the gap between rich and poor wider than ever. And though the Puritan settlement by Plymouth Rock began in peace, it ended up fighting its Indian neighbours with a brutality almost akin to the Daesh caliphate’s.