Sarah Irving-Stonebraker: re-enchanting the ahistorical age

In our age of self-invention, we are profoundly disconnected from the history that once gave us identity.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A woman sitting in an empty church talks to the camera and gestures with one hand.

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Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is an Australian historian whose new book Priests of History: stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, says that, in our age of self-invention, modern people are profoundly disconnected from the stories, practises and history that once gave them their identity.

Justin and Belle talk to Sarah about re-enchanting an ahistorical age and about her own journey from atheism to Christianity as a young academic at Cambridge and Oxford in the early 2000s.

Visit Sarah Irving-Stonebraker's web site. https://www.stonebraker.com.au/

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Podcast

Belief

Podcasts

Re-enchanting

11 June 2025

1 min read

Lamorna Ash: re-enchanting... conversion

Author Lamorna Ash talks to Belle and Justin about her odyssey to discover why so many young people are turning to a faith.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A podcast guest gestures with her hand while talking

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Lamorna Ash is an award-winning writer and journalist, she’s the author of Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town and the brand new Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion, both of which have caught a huge amount of attention.

Lamorna tells Belle and Justin about her tour of the UK - why her curiosity caused her to drive the length and breadth of the country, seeking out young adults who have converted to Christianity - and whether, by the end of it, she could count herself as one of them.