In the early twentieth century, Westminster becomes a focus of imperial sentiment in a way that would not have been foreseen in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. There are some absolutely bonkers pictures of what was going to be the imperial national senotaph. This scheme is not realized because the money never is available. And it's just as well. In the second half of the twentieth century, there is this sense of recessional and as we walked through the cloisters earlier on to day, we saw the monuments a to the colonial service and to the indian civil service. The abbey played a central part but a phase that is now long since over.
Westminster Abbey has been a place of worship for more than a thousand years, and holds a unique place in British – and world – history. In a special edition of Start the Week, recorded in the Abbey, the historian David Cannadine tells Andrew Marr how the building has been at the centre of religious and political revolutions and has maintained a special relationship with the monarchy and the royal court since the Tudor times.
It was Henry VIII who converted the abbey into a cathedral, turning this Catholic monastery into a bastion of Anglicanism, before it became directly under the monarch’s control. The historian Lucy Worsley looks back to the 16th century to recreate how Christmas was celebrated during the age of Henry VIII. The Tudor Christmas pre-dates our traditional trees and stockings. But with its heady mix of revelry and religion she discovers the Tudor influences on the customs we still enjoy today.
The former Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries explores the impact and pull of religion on some of the greatest writers of the 20th century. In ‘Haunted by Christ’ he studies how writers, like TS Elliot, CS Lewis and Emily Dickinson struggled with their faith. He looks deeply into the spiritual dimension of their work.
Music:
Coventry Carol - Traditional melody (performed by Truro Cathedral Choir)
Pastyme with Good Companye - King Henry VIII (I Fagiolini)
Producer: Katy Hickman