Priest, scholar, teacher, martial artist, lover of Japanese culture and sometime horror writer, Thomas Plant read Classics at St Andrews followed by Theology at the universities of Bristol and Cambridge (PhD). He now teaches Latin, Religious Studies and Aikido at Lichfield Cathedral School, UK, where he serves as Chaplain and Priest-Vicar Choral, and was Visiting Lecturer in Theology at Newman University, Birmingham from 2018-19. Dr Plant's academic expertise is in comparative theology, with a specific interest in Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism and the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. He has so far resisted the clerical trends of gardening and dog-walking, preferring instead to throw people around, to cram kanji, to attempt the shakuhachi, and to pen eldritch Lovecraftian tales under the pseudonym of Thomas Idoine.