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

Podcasts

Seen & Unseen Aloud

28 July 2025

1 min read

Superman, the seaside, and the Salt Path

The new Superman movie; to be beside the seaside, and what it feels like to be scammed.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A sunset over an island casts golden light on the sea and a beach.

An Argyll beach.

Nick Jones.

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About this episode

This week, Yaroslav Walker gives us his thoughts on the new Superman movie; Paul Bradbury talks about why we all like to be beside the seaside, and why it's good for us; in the wake of the Salt Path revelations, Susan Gray explores the feelings we experience when we've been taken in, or scammed.

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