Alec Ryrie talks to Diarmaid MacCulloch

Historian of Christianity Professor Alec Ryrie explains why society remains obsessed by Nazism and offers a fresh take on modern history, pop culture and the culture wars.

Ryrie says we live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate the cultural imagination and are shaping values once defined by religion. He explores history and fiction and some modern myths such as Star Wars and Harry Potter to explain why society remains captivated by this struggle. He examines the cost of our Nazi obsession and asks what will happen as our anti-Nazi moral consensus begins to fray. He also looks at what a new moral consensus might look like.

‘A brilliant exposition of Hitler’s role as the embodiment of evil in the collective imagination of the West . . . and of what may happen as it starts to fade’ Tom Holland

Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University with a speciality in the history of the Reformation and of Protestantism. He is author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt and Protestants: The Radicals Who Made the Modern World. Here he talks to historian and broadcaster Professor Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, emeritus professor of the history of the Church at the University of Oxford, and author of award-winning books including The Reformation, Thomas Cranmer and A History of Christianity.