New Year Honours: Knighthood for Prof Diarmaid MacCulloch

A leading church historian and television presenter from Oxford has received a knighthood in the New Year Honours.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch is best known for his six-part BBC television series, A History of Christianity.

The university academic has been given the title for services to scholarship.

He said he was "extremely honoured, flattered and delighted" by the award which showed how valuable arts subjects like the history of religion were.

Prof MacCulloch added: "They are the sanity of our society. Without them we wouldn't have memory and we wouldn't know how to look at the future properly."...