In the pew in which we invariably sat there was a leather-bound Prayer Book with a brass clasp. It was always there and became for me an object of intense desire, which I had to resist the temptation to take home with me. It was my first intimation of the physicality of the book as something beautiful as well as desirable, and my earliest experience of the pleasure and excitement of handling its smooth, rich-smelling cover and turning the pages. I first steeped myself in the history and romance of the Prayer Book when I was about ten years old and would read it to alleviate the *longueurs* of the sermon, which in those days sometimes lasted for 40 minutes…There were, of course, varieties of practice, and little superficial resemblance between the multi-candled ceremonial, the incense and Stations of the Cross found in the extreme High Church, and the simplicities of an evangelical church which could have been mistaken for a nonconformist chapel. But it was possible to attend different churches — on holiday, for example — and feel immediately at home, finding in the pew not a service sheet with a series number but the familiar and unifying Book of Common Prayer.
the late P. D. James on the Book of Common Prayer (via wesleyhill)