Philip Hensher

Sins of the flesh

A brain disease is pretty much the only evidence that cultures of cannibalism aren't a myth

issue 04 February 2017

Bill Schutt has an excellent subject, and he explores it from a promising angle. Cannibalism has long interested zoologists, anthropologists, historians, criminologists, literary theorists and students of theology and blasphemy — the absurd claim that Roman Catholics were commending it in their account of transubstantiation was a favourite with 18th-century English blasphemers.

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