SOURCE: “Created in His Own Image,” in Spectator, March 30, 1996, pp. 29–31.

In the following review, Miles offers a negative assessment of The Quest for God.

‘Even God weeps,’ the Sicilians say. Who would not grieve at the depths of human wickedness and weakness that we see on all sides? But surely, what drives the Almighty to reach for the Kleenex is not the daily diet of evil, rage and spite, but the dismal parade of pettiness and self-importance, of solipsism parading as significance that is passed off in His name. There will be tears in Heaven, then, at this new gospel according to St Paul Johnson, personal pilgrim by appointment to the Ancient of Days.

For [The Quest for God] is a deeply disappointing book, the more so as its avowed aim is ‘to help’ both the writer and ‘other people’. What could have been an intellectually rigorous, thought-provoking...