Have you ever seen, while walking at dusk or dawn through a wood, a shape looming from the shadows, irregular, tall, monstrous – reaching high but not a tree? I have, and it’s made me stop and step back, suddenly nervous, until I realise it for what it is: ivy, growing up and round its host, swamping it so much that the original tree is all but lost to view, a few branches and leaves poking out at the top but otherwise smothered in the ivy’s deep green.

Atheism is like that. Essentially, it is parasitic; it requires the support of a religious culture to hold it up – take that away and, like ivy, it will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

In this excellent book, Nick Spencer is much politer in his assessments. What he does do is cover, in clear, craftsman prose, the intellectual history of the last five hundred years of Western thought, showing in particular how atheism, as a recognisable school of thought, has arisen in reaction to distortions in theology and, particularly, overwheening religious power when associated with the dominant polity of the time. The greater the identification between religion and repressive state, the greater the fury against God and his ministers – and really, not surprisingly.

The boiled down summaries of complex philosophical and political debates are excellent, and come leavened with an entertaining slice of anecdotes. The philosopher, AJ Ayer, comes out particularly well: a fascinating character, with the chutzpah to run a string of mistresses (he accidentally sent identical love letters to two of them, who compared the missives to check), he once faced down a raging Mike Tyson by answering, when Tyson inquired if he knew who he was – ‘the heavyweight champion of the world’ – with the wonderful reply, ‘And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.’ Who couldn’t warm to a man with such courage – and I hope and expect that God will show him similar respect. Spencer does an excellent job of keeping his own biases from his writing, dealing fairly with all concerned and showing a particular, and justified, admiration for the working-class atheists who founded the Chartist movement.

In fact, the only group who might be miffed about his assessment is the vocal band of New Atheists but then, once you’ve written about Nietzche, Feuerbach and Marx, the posturings of the new boys become all too clear: they really are not in the same league.

Overall, an excellent survey and highly recommended.