In English Christianity, and more especially in Anglicanism, the crowning glory is surely its liturgy and music. Byrd, Tallis, Purcell and Vaughan Williams have proved more memorable and enduring than most English saints or theo­logians. The Church of England is at its best during Book of Common Prayer choral evensong with Stanford or Howells in B flat.It is this tradition which Andrew Gant, himself a composer, conductor and academic musician, celebrates and chronicles. He has a lively, unacademic writing style. “Among the first church musicians in these islands,” he writes, “were fourth-century Irish monks bellowing bad Latin into the wind with a west Scots accent, clutching a Celtic cross and ­huddling in their stone Atlantic eyries.” At times his frequen