A chance visit to the medieval place of worship reawakened my spiritual life, inspired a lifelong interest in such spaces, and eventually inspired a bestselling novel
n the mid-70s, when I was a young reporter on the London newspaper the Evening News, I was sent to Peterborough – then pretty much on the edge of the paper’s circulation area – to do a story. I had finished my interview, and had an hour to wait until the next train back to London, so, having nothing to do, I went to look at Peterborough Cathedral.
It was the first time that I had really looked at a church like that. I was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren, a puritanical religious sect. Our churches were never called “churches”; they were halls with plain white walls. Pictures and statues were forbidden; the only bit of decoration might be an embroidered text. So for me, it was all new, and standing there in Peterborough Cathedral was the beginning of my fascination.
Several decades later, I am still discovering new things. About five years ago, as part of a fundraising drive to raise money for repairs to Peterborough Cathedral, I was invited up on to the roof. It has pinnacles, little towers about 3ft high, and some of them had been replaced in the 50s with rather crude, plain versions. When you were on the roof, they looked awful, but from the ground, you couldn’t tell.
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