T SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL in London, you can hear the same bells that Shakespeare paid for to be rung at his brother’s funeral. In the Yorkshire village of North Grimston, 21st-century children are baptised in the same font as those of a thousand years before. “Churches,” writes Peter Ross, “hold within them Britain’s history, national and personal”—not just architectural wonders, but touching and enduring monuments to the countless numbers of ordinary people who’ve had some of the most important moments of
