While writers and film-makers dislike being labelled, those from a Catholic background tend to draw on their life experience in their work. Here, a critic asks if there is such a thing as a ‘Catholic imagination’ Suggesting a link between religious upbringing and creativity is tempting to critics but upsetting to artists. Graham Greene adopted from François Mauriac a formulation about preferring to be known not as a “Catholic novelist”, a standard academic and journalistic convenience, but as a “novelist who happened to be a Catholic”.  Subsequently, two American writers – the novelist Philip Roth and the playwright-screenwriter Neil LaBute – used a version of those words to refuse identification respectively as a “Jewish