My mother was a nun. My father was a Benedictine monk. Before they met and married, my father was “inside” as he calls it (as if it were prison) for almost 14 years. My mother for not much less. Which is clearly a bit odd. And my upbringing was a little odd too.

Where other people’s parents listened to pop music at breakfast, my father hummed Gregorian chants. If he was telling me something, or telling me off (the monkish virtue of obedience was big in our house) he was as likely to reference a sixth-century monastic rulebook as anything more modern. I didn’t understand everything: as a small child I thought God was called Peter (“Thanks Peter God”).

Obviously the oddest thing of all about my childhood is that it existed: monks and nuns are supposed to be celibate. So I’m glad my parents left. But I’m also glad they were once “inside”—it has left me with a lifelong interest in the religion, and in its own, sometimes odd, habits, that we explore in this story about Christianity and sex and in some of the pieces below.