Choral devotion

You don’t generally need to get to 9am matins much before the appointed hour to find a seat. In fact, if churches were still open in these virus-stricken times, matins is the service that the two-metre rule would be easiest to adhere to.

Not so at the Edington Festival, however.

I arrive at the beautiful Wiltshire village’s Priory Church of St Katherine and All Saints 45 minutes early. Settling in to one of the last free seats, I take a quick head count. Forty of us are squeezed up at the front, some with heads bowed, gathering thoughts and offering prayers inspired by a shard of bright August morning light piercing the stained glass high above the transept. As the tower’s clock strikes nine, faultless plainsong, beautifully