Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was brought up in a Christian family but lost his faith at a young age. He famously converted to Catholicism on marrying Laura Herbert in 1937, describing it as "the most complete and vital form of Christianity". Waugh's conversion was vigorously discussed in the press and, in response, he contributed his own article in which he argued "it is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilisation and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based".

Geraldine Brooks (born 1955), the Australian-American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, converted to Judaism when she married fellow Pulitzer recipient Tony Horwitz in 1984. In the mid-1990s, she wrote Nine Parts of Desire about the life of women in Muslim countries based on her experiences as a correspondent in the Middle East. Her latest work, People of the Book , narrates an imagined story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving Jewish illuminated texts.