But his train becomes stuck in a snow-drift several miles short of their destination and he and his devoted though long-suffering assistant Smee are forced to spend the night in the home of the local Anglican vicar.

Helen Pidd writing in The Guardian praised the novel: "It is a zippy little farce, littered with bus-stop slang (the professor erroneously believes "bell end" to be a compliment) and amusing nods to popular culture.

", she concludes, "The Dawkins character is a hoot: foul-mouthed, pompous, so certain of his beliefs that he will dissect a puppy in front of primary schoolchildren if it will disabuse them of the creation "myth" invented by the "dark forces of religion".

"[2] Lettie Kennedy, also in The Guardian was positive: "Between delivering kittens and turning on the Christmas lights, the stranded professor gamely persists in trying to convert his captive audience to humanism, launching into Swiftian discourses on infanticide and cannibalism at every opportunity, to the growing disquiet of Smee.

The first will be called Your Parents Are Idiots, "aimed at children unfortunate enough to have been born into religious households"...'At times Rhodes bangs his drum too often and too loud, but he is such a vivid and elegant writer that is quickly forgiven, though perhaps not if your name is Richard Dawkins.