He is married to a Pole and has spent much of his adult life traveling between Britain and Poland. His Catholic mother-in-law was a Solidarity activist in the early 1980s and was the inspiration to undertake this present work.
He has studied and/or taught at universities in Birmingham, London, Oxford, Poznań, Sheffield and Warsaw and has published several educational research monographs.
This book tells the story of how John Paul II politically deployed sacred weapons and profane enemies in communist Poland. In so doing, the Pope evoked and refashioned nationalist and religious cultural memories shaped over centuries and thereby influenced the prevailing political culture of opposition that went on to peacefully and successfully overthrow the regime.