W H Auden, T S Eliot, William Golding, Elizabeth Jennings, C S Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Stevie Smith… These are among some of the great poets and novelists whose struggles with faith finds expression in their works, and whose works have helped countless readers to appreciate the different forms that faith can take in different times and places.

Richard Harries considers the work of twenty of these writers, painting vivid pictures of their lives and times, and providing us with numerous critically sympathetic insights into the spiritual dimension of their writings.