The Pilgrims’ Way
Visiting sites of importance can connect us with history – and each other – in a way that echoes the power of medieval pilgrimage.
My favourite moment in my favourite film occurs towards the end of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1944 classic A Canterbury Tale. A young American soldier, visiting wartime Canterbury when he would much rather be at home, wanders into the city’s cathedral. He looks around him, up into the soaring space of the great building, and under his breath he reminds himself that his grandfather built the first Baptist church in his hometown in 1887. ‘Well, that was a good job too,’ he says.
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