Anna Carter Florence reads from A Preacher’s Alphabet, a work in progress, at the 2019 Festival of Preaching in Christ Church, Oxford.

Including Q for Quirinius, who, with Augustus and Herod, created a “perfect storm of misery — a terrible time for a messiah to be born, which is to say, it was a perfect time”; and C for Caleb, sent by Moses to spy on the promised land, whose good report was drowned by the false testimony and fake news of the other spies.