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Accidental Gods
On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine
Anna Della Subin
Granta Books 2022
Hb, £20, 460pp, ISBN 9781783785018
Many of the subjects of this delightfully curious book had no deliberate part in their ascendency. It also includes a few accidental goddesses. This process seems to be universal – folklorist Robert Darnton wrote about the first balloonists coming down in the French countryside and being taken for gods or angels; and, as recently as 1999, footballer David Beckham was deified as a Buddhist protector god in Bangkok’s Pariwat temple (FT137:20) – and one worthy of serious study.
Anna Subin – an American writer, editor and journalist – had the splendid idea to study a selection of more than 80 people, from diverse cultures and times, who have been inadvertently deified, often in their absence and sometimes long after their demise. Some of her subjects are well known – St Paul, Columbus, Prince Philip, Haile Selassie, various Cæsars, Gandhi, Queen Victoria – but her galaxy of lesser knowns is the real treasure trove. Subin’s themes, too, are familiar in that she acknowledges the racism of the old colonial empires in facilitating how poor, aboriginal, uneducated peoples viewed the “civilised” invaders. But there is so much more than that in her narratives.
Subin’s lively and erudite discussion doesn’t just expose some neglected corners of history but shines a compassionate light into them, revealing the long forgotten origins of local deities and heroes. What makes it a really satisfying read is that she spends some time with the characters her curiosity resurrects from oblivion, revealing the often improbable (and often comic) chains of events that led to their apotheosis. Then, icing her cake, her branching investigations follow various closely related aspects – from the ritualistic to the comedic – each more wonderful
