Sarah Sands on her brother, Kit, and the Psalms.
The Book of Psalms has already been singled out by the Revd Jonathan Aitken for this publication (December 2023) and particularly the penitential De Profundis: “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord! Lord, hear my voice.” For Aitken, once a prisoner, now a prison chaplain, the psalms were a personal path to atonement and to solace.
I came to the Psalms only last year, as a companion to music and wonderful poetry. My brother, Kit Hesketh Harvey, had been a head chorister at Canterbury Cathedral and a choral scholar at Cambridge before following a career as a cabaret performer; after he died last February I went to visit his mentor, the composer of sacred music John Rutter.
