In the decades that followed he travelled tens of thousands of mile around the Mediterranean spreading the word – surviving shipwrecks, riots, imprisonment, jailbreaks, floggings and stonings in the religious equivalent of a Boys’ Own adventure. He is one of a handful of towering figures who formed our way of thinking.”All of which is the more remarkable since the charges laid against St Paul – that he hated women, was homophobic and, according to some Jewish writers, the “father of anti-semitism” – are such cardinal sins in our contemporary culture. A man of excessive passion and irascible moral certainty, St Paul stirred up trouble wherever he went in life, and continues to do so nearly 2,000 years on.The conventional explanation for this is that in many ways Paul actually played a greater role in shaping Christianity than Jesus did. Even so, he concedes: “Paul’s ideas, in his letters, are the bedrock of Western culture.”Whether the Pope would quite put it that way is unlikely. But Edward Stourton, the Catholic broadcaster and writer, who recently made a radio series entitled In the Footsteps of St Paul, says something very similar from an overtly religious perspective: “He is the intellectual forebear of anyone who was brought up in the framework of once Christian Europe.

Of course, their takes on the man who was – love him or loathe him – one of a handful of truly great figures who have shaped the history of the world, are not exactly the same. But there is more in common than you might imagine.
Howard Brenton’s play, Paul, suggests the apostle’s famous conversion on the road to Damascus was a con-trick perpetrated by Jesus who had not died on the cross after all. The pontiff yesterday celebrated Mass in Rome to mark Paul’s conversion to Christianity. The dramatist currently has placed the faith of the greatest missionary centre-stage at the National Theatre. Here are two men you would have thought had nothing in common: the right-wing Pope Benedict XVI and the leftist secularist playwright Howard Brenton What unites them is the figure of St Paul. Only Damilola Taylor and these three defendants are privy to such matters.

However, there is powerful circumstantial evidence to draw upon – which permits a clear picture to emerge.”The trial is expected to last for up to three months.. Furthermore, Mr Temple said, both brothers had confessed or implicated themselves.”The Crown is not in a position to call any eye-witnesses to the details of the attack on Damilola Taylor,” Mr Temple said, “or indeed to identify one or more of these defendants as being in Blakes Road immediately before the attack. It was missed by the laboratory staff who originally examined the trainer “It was not just a bloodstain and no more. Within the blood drop was a damaged and apparently bloodstained dark blue synthetic fibre. The fibre was microscopically indistinguishable from the fibres used in the construction of Damilola Taylor’s trousers.” The blood on the other brother’s sweatshirt also remained undiscovered until the second investigation, he added.Mr Temple described fibres found on the clothes of all three defendants, which he said linked them to Damilola’s death. Referring to the bloodstain on the younger brother’s trainer, he told the jury: “This bloodstain was only discovered during the second investigation.