It’s an interesting choice by English Heritage to ask Stephen Fry to provide the voiceover for its online effort to get visitors to former monastic sites in its care to undertake an hour’s “contemplation and renewal regardless of your religious belief” before closing time.

It’s an interesting choice by English Heritage to ask Stephen Fry to provide the voiceover for its online effort to get visitors to former monastic sites in its care to undertake an hour’s “contemplation and renewal regardless of your religious belief” before closing time. Don’t you hate that “regardless of religious belief”? He read from Aelred of Rievaulx’s account of life in the monastery: “There was no moment for idleness or dissipation … but a marvellous freedom from the tumult of the world.”

Mr Fry is something of a poster boy for agnosticism, or possibly atheism; it is heartening that he is susceptible to the holiness of the monastic life. Personally, I wish English Heritage would do more, and offer visitors an occasional proper service, vespers or compline in the ruins, so visitors can embrace an element of the actual monastic life.

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