Understanding Western art

In The Writing on the Wall, Maggi Dawn sets about doing what John Stott called ‘double listening’ — ‘it means that we’re called to listen both to the Word of God, and to today’s world, in order to relate the one to the other’. In a deft move, she explains the Bible to the culturally literate, and culture to the biblically literate. This is no mean feat, requiring a collection of the most culturally iconic Bible stories and a whistle-stop tour of Western art right up to the 21st century.

Rachel Thorpe