I can never walk past a church without going in

Iremember being strangely drawn to churches as a teenager. It wasn’t because I was, then, particularly religious , nor do I think that I was nosier than most people – after all I didn’t feel the same compulsion to push open the doors of shops or libraries or random people’s houses and peek inside. But with churches I always did feel that urge that I couldn’t just walk past, I had to, even for five minutes, poke my head in.

Soon I realised that this urge was time well spent, that church buildings were the most incredible collections of story. That their stones and monuments, their clutter and even just their atmosphere, could communicate across centuries. I realised that there was something very special about being in places where people had come with their hopes and fears, their joys an