This chapter discusses Winterson's third novel, The Passion. The Passion may be said to combine the parallel stories of two marginal witnesses to the Napoleonic wars, at the crucial moment in Hegelian World History when it was approaching its apocalyptic synthesis. One is Henri, a French soldier who joined the Grande armée because he wanted to be a drummer and ended up as chicken-neck wringer and personal cook to Napoleon. The other is Villanelle, a Venetian boatman's daughter who worked at the casino as a croupier until she was sold by her husband as a vivandière, or army prostitute. The combination of history with fantasy aligns The Passion with ‘historiographic metafiction’, the type of novel characterised by intense self-reflexivity and a relish in storytelling which Linda Hutcheon considers to be the best expression of the contradictory nature of the postmodernist ethos.

This chapter reflects on the alleged special association between religion in general and violence – an association rebutted by both authors under review, David Martin (in Religion and Power: No logos without mythos) and Karen Armstrong (in Fields of Blood: Religion and the history of violence). It was first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 10 December 2014, under the heading "Poplars in the marsh". These two very different authors also agree that violent resistance is an inevitable response to policies that oppress large populations. The Chapter goes on to consider briefly the exorbitant reworking of Wahhabism that underpins the so-called Islamic State (Isis), and finally the obstacles that beset all attempts to found non-violent movements.

Defending the British Empire became part of the bread and butter of colonial policing, alongside crime prevention and detection. Having considered the evolution of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British policing models, this book turns to the history of post-war colonial policing. Following the inauguration of the Colonial Police Service in 1936, concerted efforts were made to bring standardisation to all colonial police forces. In explaining the origins of professional policing in Britain, it is possible to reach a greater understanding of the wider imperial dimensions. Certainly, the Irish model spread rapidly throughout the Empire, from India to Canada and on to Palestine and so on. In the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, the British Government was pressured into police reform as a result of the end of the Empire.

This chapter, together with the next, examine the decision-making process that led to the withdrawal announcement in 1968 – commonly known as the ‘East of Suez’ decision. Together they ask some of the central questions about the end of empire: Why, when and how does an empire end? The prevailing view pivots around economic retrenchment, in the sense that long-term relative economic decline had convinced the Labour government by July 1967 that it should leave the ‘East of Suez’, including Aden, Malaysia, Singapore and the Persian Gulf. This understanding rests on the assumption that the withdrawal from the Gulf was decided upon as part of the retreat from a larger area ‘East of Suez’. However, this conflated conception could only be confirmed at a rhetorical level, and in the actual policy-making process the Gulf was largely separated from other regions. As far as the Persian Gulf was concerned, very little was decided until autumn 1967.

This chapter discusses absurdist practice during the twentieth century, examining absurdism in the works of some writers, namely Fernando Pessoa, Antonin Artaud and Camus. It notes that these writers can be regarded as absurdists, and that they sometimes embrace absurdist qualities. The chapter also clarifies that the use of the word ‘absurd’ does not guarantee that a work is to be considered – with justification – as fully or solely belonging to the ‘literature of the absurd’.

Married to the Marimba looks at the lifestyle of an itinerant musician, Alex Jacobowitz, who plays a xylophone in the streets of Europe. The author and his old friend Larry Price worked on many films together. Larry wanted to make an analytical hard-hitting probing documentary about Alex. For a working title, the author and Larry settled on Gonna Travel On, to symbolize Alex's life on the road. Larry and the author rarely agreed on how to approach a film, and this could be both stimulating and tremendously infuriating. Unfortunately in Married to the Marimba it was often the latter. Investigatory and crisis films like The Chair tend to follow the chronological pattern. Married to the Marimba clearly did not fit into that pattern. Like many cinéma vérité and observational films, its themes varied, and it did not help that it was shot over ten years.

A large proportion of evidence for heresy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries comes from chronicles. Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay was writing an account of a specific set of events with heresy at their centre, drawing primarily on first-hand experience. The 'Deeds of bishops' were popular subgenre, focused of course on a particular diocese and its sequence of incumbents. The work which the Inquisitor Bernard Gui produced on the development of his religious order, the Dominicans, in which his topics were the foundation and spread of Dominican convents in the south of France, and their priors.

Adducing some insights from cultural anthropology, this Chapter compares and contrasts the histories of the Christian and the Islamic traditions of religious toleration, considering in particular the blurring of the distinction between "People of the Book" and "pagans" or "polytheists". It argues that each tradition has strengths and weaknesses if we consider them as contributions to a humanism acceptable to people today who subscribe to various religious beliefs or to none. Christendom was guilty historically of worse religious intolerance than Islam, yet it also engendered a humanistic respect for "primitive" belief systems. Islam institutionalized the concept of People of the Book, which gave a qualified recognition to its "confessional cousins", but it excluded "pagan" cultures unless they agreed to convert. Yet Islam was also capable of flexibility when a small Muslim court in India ruled over a vast non-Muslim population. An extended prefatory note reviews the progress of scholarship since the first publication of this text in Anthropology Today in 2005, and asks whether it is necessary to modify the suggestion that Muslim social scientists are inhibited from choosing to study non-monotheistic cultures. The conclusion reached ten years later is that there are at least some major exceptions.

This review of Mona Siddiqui’s Christians, Muslims, and Jesus (Yale University Press) was published in the Times Literary Supplement on 29 January 2014, under the heading "Abraham’s children". As well as being a senior academic in religious studies, Siddiqui is well known to the British public as a frequent contributor to the "Thought for the Day" religious slot in the early morning "Today" programme broadcast by the BBC’s Radio Four. SIddiqui makes an important contribution to comparative theological debate by comparing and contrasting the roles of Jesus (Isa) and Mary (Maryam) in the New Testament and the Qur’an, and more broadly in the two religious traditions as they evolved. She also reflects on the specifically Christian semiotics of the Cross. The Chapter ventures some further reflections on how the two traditions may be compared along broader lines.

Beyond the Velvet Curtain' deals with the development of a four-part series on opera, while 'Hopes and Dreams' explores the challenges of making a complex cinéma vérité family film. To prepare for the pitching sessions, and 'with the hope that blooms eternal within the human breast', the author printed some new visiting cards. The author also printed out some beautiful glossy color copies of the proposal, replete with glorious photos of fantastically decorated opera halls, charismatic long-haired conductors, ravishing sopranos, and handsome swashbuckling baritones. The author asked Andy Thomson to outline his experience in pitching to the US public broadcasting system (PBS), and reaching out generally in America and Canada. The author's last hope was the BBC. He thought Velvet Curtain might well tickle some commissioning editor's fancy. After scanning the list of heads of BBC departments, he decided to write to Jan Younghusband, senior commissioner for Music and Events.

Policing the end of the Empire in the British Caribbean was as fraught with difficulties as it was in the rest of the Empire. In the aftermath of the Second World War, British Guiana faced regular public disturbances and civil unrest, as did many of the islands of the British Caribbean. There was no exception in the British Caribbean, where the first glimmers of independence came with the extension of adult suffrage to women in British Guiana, and the adoption of limited self-government in Jamaica and Trinidad. In contrast, the creation of the West Indies Federation comprising Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and the Windward and Leeward Islands between 1958 and 1962 was perceived as a means of minimising the cost of Empire. During the post-war years, British Honduras and Anguilla stand out as cases where the British Government's policy approached the farcical.