The Three Choirs: A Handbook to the Cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford, and…

A portal to another England, this Victorian handbook captures three of Britain's most magnificent medieval cathedrals at a moment when they were still living institutions rather than monuments. R.J. King guides readers through the soaring vaults of Gloucester, where medieval monks once walked cloisters now famous to film audiences; Hereford, guardian of the Mappa Mundi and a cathedral whose bishops shaped English history; and Worcester, where the tradition of the boy bishops once turned the ecclesiastical order delightfully upside down. Beyond stone and glass, King illuminates the Three Choirs Festival, the extraordinary musical tradition that has drawn pilgrims to these three cities since the 18th century, binding them together in shared resonance. Written with the antiquarian's passion and the Victorian's exhaustive curiosity, this handbook serves both as companion for the actual traveler and as a meditation on what it means to build in stone meant to outlast centuries. For anyone who has ever stood in a great cathedral and wondered at the hands that raised it, the faith that inspired it, and the voices that still fill its space with music.