Priests de la Resistance!
FERGUS BUTLER-GALLIE
(ONEWORLD, 288 PP, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.69 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Fergus Butler-Gallie is a witty man. The Anglican cleric first became ­publicly known through his sometimes whimsical, sometimes waspish, postings on Twitter – and I’m an avid follower. This led to his first book, A Field Guide to the English Clergy. Now his publishers have brought out a book with a terrible punning title which he pleaded with them to use. The subtitle explains it’s about “the loose canons who fought Fascism in the twentieth century”. See, these people just can’t resist puns, even when they are inaccurate. For this book includes in its pen portraits four women who were never ordained.

But if the adolescent punning and Butler-Gallie’s obsessions with these people’s weight, love of wine and butter, chain-­smoking and similar earthly appetites put readers off, that would be a shame. For this book is a gripping story of bravery, derring-do and cunning in the face of Fascism.