Visiting cathedrals? Here are England’s top ten

Recently a friend from abroad, anxious to enrich himself from our past, asked me about the cathedrals. Which must he visit, which should he visit if he had time? These are not easy questions. Many years ago I wrote a book about British cathedrals and was surprised to discover how many of them there are, if you spread the net wide enough. And also how varied they are, much more so than comparable buildings on the Continent. Our individualism turns each of them into something unique. Indeed, one of the oldest and most splendid of them, Westminster Abbey, is actually a ‘royal peculiar’. Founded, renewed and adorned by kings, it has always been a sacring-place of monarchs, where they are crowned, married and buried. In the 1530s Henry VIII took it back directly into his royal hands. He dispersed the monks and set up a dean and chapter, directly answerable to himself, and the Abbey’s London gardens, farms and dairies became the royal parks — St James’s, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and so on.