Landor was a theist with a strong disdain of Christianity. “Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour.” He said, “Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.”

There is a curious collection of the impious residing eternally in and around Westminster: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, John Dryden – and the admittedly agnostic Charles Darwin!