[Anguirel]

I'm a Zoroastrian by birth; my father is a Parsee, a descendant of the Sassanid Persians who fled from the Islamic conquest of the Persian Empire in the seventh century AD, and settled in India. It's a tiny, highly inbred, and extremely competent community; Parsees in droves have become lawyers, doctors and politicians. They did extremely well under the British Raj; our lot became shipping magnates.

My father though is somewhat out of the ordinary; he's taken his Zoroastrian skill to the bloody arena of university life, and is an English don at Oxford. He also married, rather than, as would have been usual, a first cousin, my mother, a Scottish Episcopalian and novelist.

I don't see that Zoroastrianism and Christianity are in any sense irreconcilable, and I am proud to designate myself a Zoroastrian Episcopalian. Or perhaps Zoropiscy for short...

In addition I am ready to hope in, if not believe in, anything and everything that appeals to me...