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

Events

Podcasts

Re-enchanting

23 July 2025

1 min read

Re-Enchanting... Live at Bradford Literature Festival

Chine McDonald, Lamorna Ash and Francis Spufford, on belief and how to navigate our 'age of crisis'.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

a book festival panel listen to one of them speak.

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Recorded live at Bradford Literature Festival 2025, Belle Tindall brings together three of the most influential voices of the moment: Chine McDonald, Lamorna Ash and Francis Spufford. Together, they speak about what belief is, what it isn't, and how people are navigating our 'age of crisis'.

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