Ah, the Reformation. And then, inevitably, the Counter-Reformation. We remember them, sort of, especially after reading Dissolution, CJ Sansom’s detective thriller about the shutting down of and, not incidentally, the looting of rich but decadent English monasteries under Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. Or after watching the bloodflow and interfrying of both Catholics and Protestants in various TV series set during various Tudor regimes, most recently Wolf Hall.

Printing the Bible in the vernacular could get you executed. So could attempting to blow up parliament in aid of a Catholic restoration, like Guy Fawkes, which has given us a legacy of those creepy masks sported by members of the online group Anonymous. Then there was Oliver Cromwell, who broke a lot of priceless stained-glass windows in the name of a reformed religion, and made himself so unpopular with monarchists that his corpse was dug up and beheaded.

Then there were the New England Puritans. Yes, their churches were free of plaster saints and the Virgin Mary had been demoted from the queen of heaven to a nice girl who had a baby, but how much fun were the Salem witchcraft trials? (Don’t answer that: some people had quite a lot of fun.)