The past, especially the religious past, never looks the same to any two historians, and accounts of the Reformation in particular have always reflected the stance of their authors. Contrast the wise, humane and heroic portrait of Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, with the sour and relentless bigot, soused in a double helping of vinegar, of Anton Lesser’s impersonation in the television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

Catholics have rightly deplored Protestant or secular narratives of the Reformation as the triumph of truth and rationality over ignorance and superstition. But Catholic accounts of the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century were themselves often shaped by distinctive Catholic agendas.