I can trace The Beatrice Chronicles back to 2021, but not to a neat lightning bolt moment. It was more like pressure building, a set of questions that would not leave me alone, and a sense that I wanted to write a story with sacred architecture in its bones...
There is a particular kind of darkness that belongs to old stone. Not the friendly darkness of a bedroom, not the theatrical darkness of a film set. A darkness that feels like weight. Like history. Like the world continuing without your permission. Durham Cathedral is...
We often treat religion as a personal question: what someone believes, what they practise, how they pray. Cathedrals complicate that, because they are not built only for prayer. They are built to organise a world. A cathedral says: here is the centre, here is the...
It is easy to picture medieval cathedral life as a procession of solemn faces and incense. But daily life is more practical than that. It is people showing up. Doing work. Eating. Complaining. Laughing. Making mistakes. Making compromises. And, importantly for...
Stained glass is often treated as decoration. It is not. It is story and instruction, delivered in colour. It teaches you what to fear, what to admire, what to become. And because it relies on light to exist, it is also a perfect symbol for uncertainty. You do not see...
Medieval Durham in Numbers: Who Lived Here, and How Many? Durham is easy to romanticise. You stand on the peninsula, watch the River Wear coil below the walls, and it is tempting to imagine the city as a tableau of monks and masons, all solemn purpose and candlelight. T…
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