Coventry

Tuesday

Harry Mount

The wonder of ancient English parish churches

From our UK edition

John Betjeman, the patron saint of the English parish church, invented the term ‘church-crawler’ in 1948. Rachel Morley acknowledges his genius in this charming guide. But by her own admission she stands at one remove from similar church addicts. Yes, she’s fully qualified, as the director of the marvellous organisation Friends of Friendless Churches, founded in 1957. But she is in fact Irish, born and bred in Cork. She’s learnt about England through its parish churches and makes a convincing argument that they are the key to English art, architecture, the national character and even the language. The name of the 7th-century Ely nun St Etheldreda mutated into St Audrey, which gave us the word ‘tawdry’ to describe the cheap fripperies sold on St Etheldreda’s feast days.

Thursday

John Phipps

The Sunday Feature is one of the most consistently interesting things on Radio 3

From our UK edition

The story is likely apocryphal — and so disgraceful I almost hesitate to tell it — but it goes like this. On the night of 14 November 1940, as more than 500 Luftwaffe rained bombs on the people of Coventry, the newly appointed city architect Donald Gibson was watching the fires. Gibson had been appointed to the newly created position of ‘city architect’ three years earlier by the radical Labour council that had come to power in a local election. His job was to modernise what was then Britain’s best-preserved medieval city, and build the ideals of social justice and equality into the city’s brick and mortar.