Christianity is the best-kept secret of English legal history. Law schools do not mention that it might have played a part in the making of the English law. Modern judges even vehemently deny the old maxim that Christianity was a part of the common law. This lecture aims to illumine how English law was not the creation of mere reason or circumstance, but how it drew from Christianity to create many of the ideas and rights from which we still benefit today.
Bijan Omrani is a writer, classicist and cultural historian. His most recent book is God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England. Omrani trained as a barrister, but also taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School. He holds a doctorate in Classics and Ancient History, and is the author of a number of books looking at questions of religious history and cultural identity from Ancient Rome and Greece to Afghanistan and the Silk Road.