When we were first discussing this book, Keith said that a good title for it might be “A Sparrow’s Flight”. The allusion, of course, is to Bede’s metaphor of human life as a sparrow flying through a banqueting hall, from darkness and out again to darkness, with one brightly lit moment in between. Of course, it is also possible that the banqueting hall is murkier than the before and after. But whichever is true, that moment of passage – that flickering of wings amid the hubbub of the Earth – is what we have