Books & Music

Archbishop Rowan Williams is the most gifted Anglican priest of his generation. His views are consistent and orthodox and yet he has been consistently misunderstood - especially in relation to his views on contemporary society, public morality and the...

A trio of English composers perhaps better known for their creative output in other fields, yet who played a crucial role in the development of the Anglican choral tradition in the twentieth century. James O’Donnell and Westminster Abbey Choir present a...

A BBC History magazine Book of the Year. As religion divided sixteenth-century Europe, an extraordinary group of women rose to power. They governed nations while kings fought in foreign lands. They ruled on behalf of nephews, brothers and sons. They...

Injustice makes us angry, and rightly so, yet there can be no perfectly just person, institution, or society. In three timely essays, Justice in Public Life shows us why and how we must strive together towards justice, even though this work is always a...

Letters from Lockdown comprises 12 weekly letters written by the Director of Westminster Abbey Institute during the Coronavirus lockdown, and three accompanying essays that give the deeply personal perspectives of a politician, a civil servant and a...

London has the greatest literary tradition of any city in the world. Its roll call of storytellers includes cultural giants like Shakespeare, Defoe, and Dickens, and an innumerable host of writers of all sorts who sought to capture the essence of the...

London's Strangest Tales takes a walk on London's weirder side with an absorbing collection of curious tales from one of the world's greatest cities. This fascinating book is packed with amazing things you didn't know about Britain's capital, like the...

Sunday Times bestselling novelist Alison Weir returns with the spellbinding story of Mary I. A DESTINY REWRITTEN. A ROYAL HEART DIVIDED. Adored only child of Henry VIII and his Queen, Katherine of Aragon, Princess Mary is raised in the golden splendour...

Written in aid of the crucial restoration work to restore Paris’s great cathedral, Notre-Dame: A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals is a moving, short piece of non-fiction celebrating the stunning history of this beloved building, from Ken...

The profound emotion felt around the world upon seeing images of Notre-Dame in flames opens up a series of questions: Why was everyone so deeply moved? Why does Notre-Dame so clearly crystallise what our civilisation is about? What makes ‘Our Lady of...

Stanford’s eight-part Latin Magnificat was posthumously dedicated to Parry, whose own Songs of farewell are unmistakably valedictory in mood. Personal as well as musical associations run deep in this poignantly expressive programme, recorded in June 2019...

Poems of London brings together a remarkably wide range of poems inspired by the storied city, from its teeming medieval streets to the multicultural metropolis it is today. The pantheon of classic English poets, from Shakespeare and Donne to Wordsworth...