The fortieth anniversary of Richard Dawkins’ most influential scientific work, The Selfish Gene, has been marked with interviews and profiles that celebrate his fame as a controversialist rather than as a biologist – and his recovery after a recent minor stroke. His slight brush with death has not abated the fervour of his atheism. He said recently he still believed “religion should be offended at every opportunity”. In the field of anti-religious polemic one of his few equals was journalist Christopher Hitchens, who died of cancer five years ago, declaring not long before he died: “Redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before.”

These men enjoyed a cult following as two saints of secularism, and many of Hitchens’ admirers were infuriated by a recent book which alleged that he had begun to dilute his atheism. The American writer Larry Taunton, an evangelical Christian, claimed in The Faith of Christopher Hitchens that he was “teetering on the edge of belief” in his final years.