The humanist historian brings objects to life beautifully, but falters when it comes to people and their beliefs

Domination tells the story of how a tiny local cult became one of the greatest cultural and political forces in history. Alice Roberts puts the case that the Roman empire lived on in a different form in the church.

It is not an original idea – after all the foundation prayer of Christianity says “thy Kingdom come” – but Roberts tells the story from the point of view of individual parishes and even buildings. It’s a revelation, like watching those stop-motion films of how a plant grows and blooms. There’s a section about how a Roman villa might transform into a parish, the long barn providing the footprint, the web of relationships providing the social connection, the very tiles and columns providing the building materials. I can’t think of anyone who writes better about the way objects can speak to us. There’s a passage here describing her joy on grasping what it means that an ordinary-looking clay lamp found in Carlisle is purple on the inside; there’s a beautiful afterword about the history of bells.

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