‘I look around the dimly-lit bar and notice how the hard-drinking clientele watches suspicious newcomers like me, with my British-tainted accent and far too many questions. I ask another one: "Do the Hell's Angels come here, Brian?" Bingo.’

‘In the 1950s, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene wrote triumphalist Catholic novels with miracles as part of the story — Brideshead Revisited, The End of the Affair. They were bestsellers. Since Vatican II, however, the tenor of Catholic fiction has been doubt, dissent and disillusion.’