The poet laureate Andrew Motion has said that children should be taught the Bible throughout their education on the grounds that it is an “essential piece of cultural luggage” needed to properly understand literature.

Speaking to The Guardian, Motion said that many English literature students come to university barely knowing who Adam and Eve are because teaching the “great stories” of the Bible is disappearing from schools.

He stressed that children should not be indoctrinated, but said they should at least know the historical stories which have influenced so many writers down the ages.

"I am not for a moment suggesting that everybody be made to go to church during their childhood. But what I do think would be worth thinking about [is] how there could be some kind of general treatment of this all the way through a child's schooling."

Motion claimed that people cannot understand literature such as that of John Milton, TS Eliot, and many others, without first reading the Bible.

In particular he said the Sermon on the Mount and the crucifixion have influenced story structures ever since they first appeared, whilst the book of Ruth must be read because of “the beauty of the writing”.

Motion said that children needed to read the Bible "simply because it is full of terrific stories".

"They speak to us about human nature and the recurring patterns of human behaviour," he said.

The poet laureate is currently professor of creative writing at Royal Holloway University of London. He said that all humanities undergraduates should be given a crash course in the great stories, according to The Guardian.

"I would start with Christian stories, Qur'anic stories, Greek and Roman stories, but it could be refined depending on what the subject is: a little history for people doing English, a bit of English for people doing history, for example."

However Keith Porteous Wood, executive director and former general secretary of the National Secular Society, said, "It's a bit excessive - children already get 45 minutes of religious education a week for 10 years. They also attend compulsory acts of worship which includes reading the Bible. Isn't that enough?"