The Darkening Age

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What to expect

'Bold, dazzling and provocative' – Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

'This book uncovers what was lost when Christianity won' – The Times

In The Darkening Age, historian Catherine Nixey tells the little-known – and deeply shocking – story of how a militant religion deliberately tried to extinguish the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in unquestioning adherence to the 'one true faith'.

The Roman Empire had been generous in embracing and absorbing new creeds. But with the coming of Christianity, everything changed. This new faith, despite preaching peace, was violent, ruthless and intolerant. And once it became the religion of empire, its zealous adherents set about the destruction of the old gods. Their altars were upturned, their temples demolished and their statues hacked to pieces. Books, including great works of philosophy and science, were consigned to the pyre. It was an annihilation.

'A searingly passionate book' - Bettany Hughes, author of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

A Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the Observer, and BBC History Magazine

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Nonfiction

Critics Review

This book uncovers what was lost when Christianity won . . . a delightful book about destruction and despair.
The Times
Catherine Nixey has written a bold, dazzling and provocative book that challenges ideas about early Christianity and both how – and why – it spread so far and fast in its early days. Nixey is a witty and iconoclastic guide to a world that will be unfamiliar, surprising and troubling to many.
Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Road
A searingly passionate book . . . Nixey writes up a storm. Each sentence is rich, textured, evocative, felt . . . Nixey delivers this ballista-bolt of a book with her eyes wide open and in an attempt to bring light as well as heat to the sad story of intellectual monoculture and religious intolerance
New York Times
Superb
Richard Dawkins
With passion, wit and thunderous eloquence, Nixey throws everything she has against the bishops, monks and Christian emperors of late antiquity . . . The Darkening Age rattles along at a tremendous pace, and Nixey brilliantly evokes all that was lost with the waning of the classical world.
Sunday Times
A book for the 21st century . . . Nixey has a great story to tell, and she tells it exceptionally well. As one would expect from a distinguished journalist, every page is full of well-turned phrases that leap from the page . . . finely crafted, invigorating . . . [The Darkening Age] succeeds brilliantly.
Guardian
Nixey is a funny, lively, readable guide through this dark world of religious oppression.
New Statesman
Clever, compelling . . . Readers raised in the milky Anglican tradition will be surprised to learn of the savagery of the early saints and their sledgehammer-swinging followers . . . exceptionally well written.
Spectator
Nixey has done an impressive job of illuminating an important aspect of late-antique Christianity.
Literary Review
Engaging and erudite, Catherine Nixey's book offers both a compelling argument and a wonderful eye for vivid detail. It shines a searching spotlight on to some of the murkiest aspects of the early medieval mindset. A triumph.
Edith Hall, author of The Ancient Greeks: Ten Ways They Shaped the Modern World
Nixey's elegant and ferocious text paints a dark but riveting picture of life at the time of the 'triumph' of Christianity, reminding us not just of the realities of our own past, but also of the sad echoes of that past in our present.
Dr Michael Scott
Captivating and compulsive, Catherine Nixey's debut challenges our whole understanding of Christianity's earliest years and the medieval society that followed. A remarkable fusion of captivating narrative and acute scholarly judgment, this book marks the debut of a formidable classicist and historian.
Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets
A devastating book, written in vivid, yet playful prose. Catherine Nixey reveals a level of intolerance and anti-intellectualism which which echoes today's headlines but is centuries old.
Anita Anand
Pugnacious and energetically written
The Tablet
Sizzling, scintillating
Spectator

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