Rethymnon and the people of Crete remember the tragedy of the siege of Arkadi 160 years ago on 8 November 1866

The Monastery of Arkadi has a special place in the heart of all Cretans (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today has been a solemn day in Crete, marking the 160th anniversary of the tragic and cataclysmic destruction of the Monastery of Arkadi on 8 November 1866, which became a pivotal event in the Cretan Revolt against Ottoman rule.

On this day 160 years ago, 966 Cretans – mostly unarmed women children, and monks, alongside fewer than 260 resistance fighters – died tragically while they were seeking refuge within the monastery walls from a 15,000-strong Ottoman army.

Every year on 8 November, the people of Rethymnon solemnly commemorate this anniversary. After a three-day battle, the besieged Cretan rebels, women and children who sought shelter in the monastery blew up barrels of gunpowder in a store on 8 November 1866,, choosing death rather than surrender.

Ever since, the Monastery of Arkadi people in Crete have closely identified the monastery with the struggle for Greek Independence. The day is a regional holiday and a memorial, not a festival, marked with a series of events, including a memorial service at the monastery mausoleum, as well as speeches, wreath-laying and the raising of the flag at the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Rethymnon.

The monastery is the focal point of these commemorations. The ossuary and museum are open to visitors throughout the year, and visitors are welcome at the public ceremonies this.

Skulls in the ossuary in Arkadi Monastery from a battle in 1866 during the Turkish occupation of Crete, when hundreds of people died (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Arkadi stands on a fertile plateau in the foothills of Psilorítis, 23 km south-east of Rethymnon. I have regularly visited this monastery since I first started staying in Rethymnon almost 40 years ago. It is a pleasant journey through Platanias up through the bright mountain villages of Adele, Pigi, Loutra, Pigi and Kirianna, taking about half an hour through olive groves and vineyards, and along the side of the Arkadi Gorge.

The main church or katholikon dates back to the 16th century but shows Roman, Venetian, Renaissance and Baroque elements in its architecture. This church is unusual with its two aisles, and is dedicated to both the Transfiguration and to Saint Constantine and Saint Helen.

Since the 16th century, the monastery has been a centre for the sciences, art and learning. The church was built in 1587, replacing a smaller church dating from the 13th century. The façade, which was designed in renaissance style, was influenced by the work of the architects Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio.

Today there only seven monks living in the monastery. But despite the constant arrival of tourists and visitors and the dwindling number of monks, it remains a working monastery.

Inside the new museum in Arkadi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A new museum opened in Arkadi in 2016. Although most visitors want to see display items that tell the story of the horrific events over a century and a half ago, the museum includes books from the monastery library, icons, the liturgical items, vestments, stoles, patens, chalices and crosses.

Most of the items come from smaller monastic houses (metochia) and chapels that were once dependencies of Arkadi. They date from 1629 to the mid-19th century, and the earliest are fine examples of the Late Cretan School.

Embroidered inscriptions on the liturgical vestments include the names of abbots, priests and deacons. They show an interesting mixture of western and eastern traditions: the monks used purple silk textiles as the background for Byzantine-style flat embroidery and western-style relief embroidery created with gold and silver wire and thread and gold or silver-wrapped cord. The iconography followed the Byzantine tradition, while the decorative motifs and details were inspired by western art.

The main church in Arkadi is unusual for its double-aisled interior (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Arkadi once had a rich monastic library, but only a fragment of this collection have survived. Some of the volumes on display have elaborate covers, and many were produced on printing presses in Venice, which shows how the connection between Crete and Venice continued long after the Ottoman Turks captured Crete in the 17th century.

The museum is housed on the ground floor of the south-west wing of the monastery. This is one of the oldest parts of the monastery buildings, and was originally used for storing wine and olive oil.

In the monastic cloisters in Arkadi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Arkadi once featured on the Greek 100 Drachmai banknote, and the monastery’s image was restored to popular currency with the issue of 750,000 new €2 coins in Greece in 2016 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the destruction of Arkadi.

One side of the coin shows the monastery with inscriptions bearing its name and the name of Greece in Greek, along with the monogram of the artist George Stamatopoulos.

The journey back down from Arkadi often takes me through the villages of Roupes and Nea Magnisia, which takes its name from the classical Greek city near Ephesus in western Anatolia. The village was founded by Greek-speaking refugees, expelled from present-day Manisa, about 65 km north-east of Smyrna in Turkey in the 1920s – a reminder that the conflicts that almost destroyed Arkadia in 1866 continued for more than half a century after.

The garden in the cloisters in Arkadi Monastery in the mountains above Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Arkadi is an enduring symbol of Crete (Images: Patrick Comerford)

Somerville College Chapel has values and traditions that are unique in Oxford, and also has an unusual inscription in Greek

The Greek inscription over the entrance to the chapel in Somerville College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

One day in Oxford recently, I went in search of the Greek inscription over the Wren Door on the north side of the Divinity School in Bodleian Library. This has been described by some sources as the only public inscription in Greek in Oxford. However, later that day I found another public inscription in Greek at the chapel in Somerville College on Woodstock Road.

The Greek inscription in capital letters above the west door or entrance to the chapel reads, Οικοσ Προσευχησ Πασι Τοισ Εθνεσιν. This translates as ‘A House of Prayer for all People’, and is quotation from Isaiah 56: 7. This verse is quoted by Jesus when he enters the Temple in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and says, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer”; but you are making it a den of robbers’ (Matthew 21: 13).

Somerville College was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of the first two women’s colleges in Oxford – the Anglican-founded Lady Margaret Hall opened the same year. The non-denominational and liberal values of Somerville College date from its founding by political and social liberals. It was among the first colleges to end locking up at night to stop students staying out late, no gowns are worn at formal halls, and it first admitted men in 1994. The alumnae include Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Vera Brittain, Shirley Williams and Dorothy L Sayers.

The main entrance and the Porters’ Lodge of Somerville College on the south end of Woodstock Road, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Somerville Hall opened with 12 students, aged from 17 to 36, and the first 21 students from Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall attended lectures in rooms above a baker’s shop on Little Clarendon Street. Just two of the original 12 students remained in Oxford for three years, the time required for male students to attain a bachelor’s degree.

Somerville appointed Lilla Haigh as its first in-house tutor in 1882, and by the end of the 1890s female students were attending lectures in almost all colleges. In 1891 it became the first women’s hall to introduce entrance exams, and in 1894 it changed its name to Somerville College. The traditionally all-male colleges in Oxford began to admit female students in the 1970s, but Somerville did not admit men until 1992.

The main entrance and the Porters’ Lodge are at the south end of Woodstock Road, with Little Clarendon Street to the south, Walton Street to the west and the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter to the north. The front of the college is between the Oxford Oratory and the Faculty of Philosophy, and five buildings are Grade II listed.

Somerville College Chapel is unique for an Oxford college because it has no religious affiliation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Somerville College Chapel is unique as an Oxford college because it has no religious affiliation – reflecting the non-sectarian foundation of the college as place for the higher education of women. It is seen as both a manifestation of the aspirations of liberal Christianity in the inter-war years, including the advancement of women and ecumenism, and a response to the role of religion in higher education at the time.

The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has described the chapel as ‘bleakly classical, ashlar, of three windows with narrower altar and lobby protections, bleak also inside – unloved-looking somehow.’ But the chapel embodies the college’s commitment to religious freedom, and was built in as a plain, neutral space with no cross or crucifix. It is built of dimension stone ashlar masonry and stands opposite Somerville College Library, on the south side of the main quad.

The creation of the chapel was made possible with a generous and, at the time, anonymous donation from a former student, Emily Georgiana Kemp (1860-1939), in 1932. She was an adventurer, writer and artist, and came from a wealthy Baptist family. Through her extensive travels, she developed an inclusive vision of Christianity, an interest in world religions and a wide, inclusive vision of faith.

Kemp wanted the chapel to be a place where members of all nationalities and religions could pray. Like the college, the chapel would be nondenominational, and this is unique within the University of Oxford.

Inside the chapel in Somerville College, Oxford, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

However, the beginnings of the chapel were not without problems. Despite Emily Kemp’s request for a building to promote ‘the spiritual life, mainly by prayer and meditation, for those of all creeds and nations’, there was strong resistance. The Association of Senior Members (ASM), representing former students, was determined to maintain Somerville’s non-sectarian character and Helen Darbishire (1881-1961), the then Principal of Somerville College (1931-1945), described one meeting with the ASM in 1932 as ‘lively’.

A compromise was eventually agreed: the chapel was carefully located so as not to dominate the grounds and the architecture and interior were designed to avoid conventional religious archetypes.

Emily Kemp, who donated the chapel to Somerville during her own lifetime, would recall how her ‘imagination was fired with stories of adventure’ by accounts of missionary work she heard as a child. She was one of the first students at Somerville and went on to lead an adventurous life, writing a number of travel books about her journeys in Asia.

Inside the chapel in Somerville College, facing the entrance and the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Between leaving Somerville and setting off on her first trip to China, Emily Kemp studied Fine Art with Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), who was Slade Professor of Art at University College London. She documented her travels and adventures with her watercolours and in her books, including: The Face of China (1909), The Face of Manchuria, Korea and Russian Turkestan (1910), Wanderings in Chinese Turkestan (1914), and Chinese Mettle (1921). She also translated a book on Buddhism from German in 1910.

Her books show her fascination with the religions she encountered and the places of worship she visited, and show her dedication to the welfare and education of women.

She also wrote two books about missionaries: a biography of her sister, Reminiscences of a Sister, S Florence Edwards (1919), and an account of women Baptist missionaries, There followed Him, women (1927). Her belief in the importance of women in Christianity is expressed in her last book, Mary, with her son, Jesus (1930).

The chapel in Somerville College was designed by the architect Courtenay Theobald (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The chapel in Somerville was designed by the architect Courtenay Theobald, who later redesigned the Lumen Church in Tavistock Place, London, in the 1960s.

The chapel opened in 1935 and was dedicated to God, and only the stained glass window, designed by George Bell, is dedicated to Christ explicitly.

Kemp also donated a 19th century Italian terracotta derived from the ‘Annunciation lunette’ in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, by Andrea della Robbia. The subject symbolic got her the special importance of women in serving God.

Emily Kemp died in 1939. Her memorial plaque in the chapel calls her a ‘friend of China’ and not a ‘missionary’.

She left a significant bequest of western and eastern art to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, along with three oil paintings, including a number of works by Alphonse Legros, ‘The Holy Family’ by Ambrosius Benson (ca 1550), and a collection of her own watercolours painted in Asia.

Notable alumnae of Somerville College are commemorated on the chapel walls (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Notable Somerville alumnae commemorated on the chapel walls include the Revd Constance (Todd) Coltman (1889-1969), Britain’s first ordained female minister in a mainstream church. Other names include the novelist and Christian apologist Dorothy L Sayers, Dorothy Hodgkin, Margaret Thatcher, and Dame Emily Penrose (1858-1942), the third principal (1907-1926).

The chapel organ was made in 1937 by Harrison & Harrison in Durham. Kemp’s friend, the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), was the chapel’s organ adviser and recommended a Neo-Baroque organ, as this style was popular in the organ reform movement. However, the college voted for an organ voiced in the style of the Romantic era. The organ case is made of oak, designed by the architect Courtenay Theobald, and was renovated in 2012. The organ is used regularly for recitals, concerts and recordings.

The chapel also has a Steinway grand piano, a two-manual harpsichord by Robert Goble and a portable digital piano.

The stained glass window designed by George Bell is dedicated to Christ and is the only explicitly Christian image in Somerville College Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

In keeping with the non-denominational tradition of Somerville College, the chapel has a chapel director rather than a dean or chaplain. The current chapel director, Dr Joel Clarkson, hosts the choral contemplation events at 5:30 pm each Sunday in term time, combining choral music from the college choir with readings and reflections from speakers of a variety of backgrounds. He also helps connects members of the Somerville community with wellbeing resources.

Clarkson is also a composer for film, concert, and sacred music, with a research interest in interdisciplinary studies between music and theology. His PhD in theology is from the Institute of Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His doctoral thesis examined how 20th century Catholic metaphysics impacted musical and liturgical reform in the Catholic Church. He has written on the Scottish Catholic composer James MacMillan, and on theological content in the music of composers such as Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and Olivier Messiaen.

He began his musical career in Los Angeles as a composer and orchestrator for film and TV. After his doctorate, he specialised in composing for vocal music, drawing on the English choral tradition. His music has been premiered and performed by vocal ensembles such as Grammy-nominated VOCES8 and the Vicars Choral of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London.

The chapel in Somerville College hosts the choral contemplation events at 5:30 pm each Sunday in term time (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Somerville College Choir is young by Oxford standards, yet has released several albums with commercial labels, undertaken international tours and performed live on national radio. The real strength of the choir is found in its freedom from convention, enabling a diverse repertoire. There are regular concerts, cathedral visits, recitals and tours, and the choir has released two CDs. True to the spirit of the college founders, the choir is also non-denominational in its practice and vision.

The choir is mixed voice and led by the Director of Chapel Music, Will Dawes. He was appointed in 2017 and has also been Director of Music at Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford, since 2011.

As well as providing opportunities for traditional Christian worship and in keeping with its liberal, inclusive tradition, the chapel hosts speakers with a range of religious perspectives. Past speakers have include the Belfast-born Oxford theologian Alister McGrath, Shirley Williams, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, the humanist Andrew Copson and the writer Rosamund Bartlett.

An annual service commemorates past members of the Somerville community who have died in the previous year.

The Somerville Remembrance Garden, with the chapel in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today, the chapel in Somerville College continues to reflect the non-sectarian values at the foundation of the college as a place for the higher education of women. It is seen as both a manifestation of the aspirations of liberal Christianity in the inter-war years, including the advancement of women and ecumenism, and a response to the role of religion in higher education at that time.

The motto carved in Greek above the entrance to the chapel reads ‘A house of prayer for all people’, and so it has proved.

True to the vision of its founder, Emily Kemp, the chapel remains a place where people of all nationalities and religions can pray, discuss, meditate and celebrate their spiritual lives.

The chapel in Somerville College continues to reflect the non-sectarian values at the foundation of the college as a place for the higher education of women (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to churches, chapels and religious buildings and sites in Oxford, visit here

Daily prayer in Kingdom Season 2026: 8, Sunday 8 November 2026, the Third Sunday before Advent, Remembrance Sunday

Fading poppies in a garden on Beacon Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in the Kingdom Season in the Church Calendar and today is both the Third Sunday before Advent and Remembrance Sunday. The calendar of the Orthdox Church today commemorates the Synaxis of the Archangels (Michael, Raphael and Gabriel) and All the Heavenly Host. Later this morning, I am reading one of the lessons at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and I hope to attend the Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Stony Stratford at 3 pm this afternoon.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom … and five were wise’ (Matthew 25: 1-2) … sculptures at the West Front of Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 25: 1-13 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 1 ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” 7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” 9 But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” 10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11 Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” 12 But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” 13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.’

‘Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom … Five of them were foolish’ (Matthew 25: 1-2) … sculptures at the West Front of Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The half-term elections in the US have done little to abate fears about Trump’s pursuit of war in Iran, nor has it negated his betrayal of the President and people of Ukraine in the war being waged against them by Putin’s Russia. With the rise in power of Steve Miller in recent days, I continue to fear for world peace and stability, about global change, about rules-based international order and about the course of world democracy. The far-right has been emboldened by Trump and Elon Musk and other far-right mega tycooons in the US have a direct link with the upsurge in violence, racism and antisemitism in Britain, across Europe and around the world.

But I am finding comfort this morning in the words of the Collects and the Post-Communion Prayer, as they ask God to ‘govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,’ seek God’s ‘just and gentle rule’, ask God to ‘look with compassion on the anguish of the world’, and to ‘bring near the day when wars shall cease and poverty and pain shall end’.

In a world in which the most powerful leaders and the richest lack wisdom and as they pursue war in the Middle East, the Gulf and between Russia and Ukraine, the first reading in the Lectionary this morning (Wisdom of Solomon 6: 12-16) reminds us of the virtues of seeking wisdom:

14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
15 To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths,
and meets them in every thought.

On this morning, Remembrance Sunday, the epistle reading (I Thessalonians 4: 13-18) challenges us to think about appropriate ways of remembering those who ‘have fallen asleep,’ the dead.

Is there a thin line that separates remembering the dead and glorifying war?

Is there a way in which we might realise that God identifies with our sufferings through war, injustice and oppression, whether that is in the present or in the past?

The setting for the Gospel reading (Matthew 25: 1-13) is on the Mount of Olives, looking down on the Temple, where Christ has been teaching in the week leading up to his Passion, Death and Resurrection. In the Church, we too are preparing, preparing for Advent, when we think about Christ’s Second Coming, as King in Glory, at the end of time: ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Matthew 23: 39).

Christ is speaking about the connection we should make between how we live now and what will happen at the Second Coming.

Christ comes not as a special, added decoration for shop windows in the weeks before Christmas, or to make the Christmas crib cosy and comfortable … and everything else in the window marketable.

This Gospel reading challenges us: do we too easily accept the easy values of this world’s kingdoms … or are we prepared to meet the demands and expectations of the Kingdom of God?

The exhortation to ‘Keep awake’ is a call to be prepared – for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the Second Coming of Christ.

The American poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) died in France in World War I. In his poem, ‘Prayer of a Soldier in France,’ he shows not only how Christ identifies with suffering in war-time but with our suffering at all times:

My shoulders ache beneath my pack
(Lie easier, Cross, upon His back).

I march with feet that burn and smart
(Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart).

Men shout at me who may not speak
(They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek).

I may not lift a hand to clear
My eyes of salty drops that sear.

(Then shall my fickle soul forget
Thy agony of Bloody Sweat?)

My rifle hand is stiff and numb
(From Thy pierced palm red rivers come).

Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
Than all the hosts of land and sea.

So let me render back again
This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.

I conclude my reflections on this Remembrance Sunday with a well-known prayer from Westminster Abbey:

May God grant
to the living grace,
to the departed rest,
to the Church and the World peace and concord,
and to us sinners eternal life. Amen

‘Age shall not weary them’ … fading poppies among weeds by the roadside in Comberford village, Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 8 November 2026, Remembrance Sunday):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 8 to 14 November 2026 (pp 54-55), is ‘Pray for COP31’. This theme was introduced today with a reflection by Sophia Jones, Interim Director of Communications, Engagement, and Fundraising, USPG:

The theme of the Lambeth Conference in 2022 was God’s Church for God’s World – Walking, Listening and Witnessing Together. The bishops discussed ten Lambeth Calls on themes and world affairs. One of them was the Lambeth Call on Environment and Sustainable Development.

In its declaration it states: “Anglicans hold to Scripture and the teachings of the Church, reflected in the Five Marks of Mission. These provide a clear vision and holistic framework for intentional discipleship and for being God’s Church for God’s World. They call us to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom, nurture disciples, and to express our concern for people and planet, for justice, peace, and care for vulnerable people, as well as our duty to safeguard creation (Genesis 2:15) and to sustain and renew the life of the earth (Fifth Mark of Mission).”

As the annual UN Climate Summit, COP31, meets this week in Antalya, Türkiye, we are reminded that we each have a role to play in caring for God’s creation. Anglicans have been speaking out and amplifying the voices of the vulnerable at the highest levels of diplomatic advocacy at the UN, and we will have a presence at COP31 this year too.

We are planting trees in our local parishes and dioceses, growing the Communion Forest, a global initiative of local activities of forest protection, tree growing and ecosystem restoration undertaken by provinces, dioceses and individual churches across the Anglican Communion to safeguard creation.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 8 November 2026, Remembrance Sunday) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Micah 4: 1-5:

A prayer for peace at the west front of Westminster Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of all:
govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

God, our refuge and strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease
and poverty and pain shall end,
that earth may know the peace of heaven
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Poppies on my grandfather’s grave in Saint Catherine’s Churchyard, Portrane, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The War Memorial in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)