He was a pope of the pen, holing up in the papal studio where he produced tomes on the life of Jesus Christ and spiritual reflections on the dangers of modern finance and the importance of romantic love.

WSJ: Pope Defended Church Teachings

He has been a pope of the pen, holing up in the papal studio where he produced tomes on the life of Jesus Christ and spiritual reflections on the dangers of modern finance and the importance of romantic love.

WSJ: Pope Moved to Build Church's Spiritual Life

The interplay between Mr Hyman's reflections on government and his experience in real life is sometimes clumsy, but never dull.

ECONOMIST: Politics and education

The result blends a vivid account of daily life, fluid and unsettling, in a modern British town with powerful allegorical reflections on the connections between past and present, time and space, and high culture and the hard scrabble world that sustains it.

ECONOMIST: Oxford