Arriving in Durham late one March afternoon, I realised that if I was quick I could just make Evensong at the cathedral. It was well worth the brisk dash along the river. Responses by Tallis, psalms by Barber and Pergolesi’s piercing Stabat Mater Dolorosa as the closing anthem, sung by a visiting choir from a Yorkshire girls’ school with such skill and passion as to make even an old pessimist like me think that the country might not be doomed after all.
The setting helped, of course. In my not very informed opinion, Durham is the finest cathedral in the country, though I will concede that it is run close by the Gothic and Norman masterpieces of the Fens – Lincoln, Ely and Peterborough – and I am highly susceptible to the charms of Westminster, with its striking brick exterior and those high mysterious domes still awaiting decoration after more than a century.
