January, 2017 | Church of St Edward King and Martyr

“A new biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, shaped and structured around the story he himself tells in his most famous poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

Though the ‘Mariner’ was written in 1797 when Coleridge was only twenty-five, it was an astonishingly prescient poem. As Coleridge himself came to realise much later, this tale – of a journey that starts in high hopes and good spirits, but leads to a profound encounter with human fallibility, darkness, alienation, loneliness and dread, before coming home to a renewal of faith and vocation – was to be the shape of his own life. In this rich new biography, academic, priest and poet Malcolm Guite draws out how with an uncanny clarity, image after image and event after event in the poem became emblems of what Coleridge was later to suffer and discover.

Of course ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is more than just an individual’s story: it is also a profound exploration of the human condition and, as Coleridge says in his gloss, our ‘loneliness and fixedness’. But the poem also offers hope, release, and recovery; and Guite also draws out the continuing relevance of Coleridge’s life and writing to our own time.”

Services this week

January 23, 2017/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by St Edward King & Martyr Parish

Friday 27th January

10.30 BCP Communion, followed by dedication of a stone in memory of Elizabeth Edwards.

Led by Alan Cole

Sunday 29th January

11 am Service of the Word for Candlemas

5 pm Taize service

Services this week

January 17, 2017/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by St Edward King & Martyr Parish

Friday 20th January 2017

10.30 am BCP Communion

5.30 pm Meditation

Sunday 22nd January

11 am CW communion

5 pm Meditative eucharist

Remembering Elizabeth Edwards 27th January 2017

January 13, 2017/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by St Edward King & Martyr Parish

A stone is to be placed on the path through the churchyard to remember Elizabeth Edwards, who died nearly a year ago. We will gather around the stone for short remembrance, after the 10.30 am BCP communion service on Friday 27th January, followed by tea, coffee, cake and reminiscence.