Reading is well-known as the probably the largest town in the country not to be granted city status and has often been regarded as a typical provincial town, not least when it was chosen as the location for a 'fly-on-the-wall' documentary about the typical English family. This book traces the history of Christianity in the Reading area from the last years of the Roman Empire, through the origins of the present town in the Saxon era, the foundation of its Abbey under King Henry I, the upheavals of the Reformation and Civil War, the impact of the Evangelical Revival, and the challenge represented by the massive increase in its population in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In the course of this story we meet many who are or should be household names including John Bunyan, John Wesley, Charles Simeon and Jane Austen, as well as others with a more local reputation - schoolmaster, Julins Palmer, a forger called Britain, shoemaker Richard Clarke and a pair of singing curates!

Author, John Dearing, has lived in Reading since 1980 and in the Thames Valley since 1970. Now retired, in the course of a varied career he worked as a teacher of English, a civil servant, a marketing manager in the shipbuilding industry and a management consultant. He has written extensively on aspects of Reading's history and served for 12 years as Chairman of the History of Reading Society.