There are good times and bad times to visit Durham Cathedral. Sunny afternoons in August are best avoided: the place is likely to be packed and you’d find more serenity in a shopping mall. Chilly mornings in January are a safer bet. It is then that, with a little luck, you can experience the cathedral’s greatest gift: the opportunity to step back in time. That, I realise, is a hackneyed kind of phrase but at Durham it can truly happen. Admittedly, the cathedral would have looked very different during the medieval era: there would have been jazzy colours where now there is only naked stone, and the building’s later glories were a long way in the future. In the quieter moments, however, the essence of the cathedral’s past is still accessible: the airiness, the archit