Victorian who believed she was a female Christ

England’s lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia, by Philip Hoare, Fourth Estate, €36.

England’s lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia, by Philip Hoare, Fourth Estate, €36.

As a novelist, my nightly prayer is, thank God people are not rational, because if they were I would be out of a job.

The good news - and the reason why novelists flourish - is that there is an irrational streak incubating under the surface of most societies. Indeed, the more seemingly logical and technologically driven a society ...