Apocalypse

Revelation went into Lawrence in childhood the way a hymn does, through the ear, Sunday after Sunday in the chapels of the Nottinghamshire coalfield, and he spent the last months of his life settling the account. John's Revelation, he says flatly, is the work of a second-rate mind and has thrilled second-rate minds ever since: the envy of those the world never crowned, a fantasy of the meek enthroned while the smoke of their enemies goes up forever.