EDITORIAL

by Peter Jukes & Hardeep Matharu

Seeing the Light

It seems quintessentially English. Though most of our subscribers are not London-based, and we have a readership from across the world, Southwark Cathedral is in effect the parish church for the area in which Byline Times’ office is located.

As a tourist attraction, sitting right next to the 1,000-year-old Borough Market, the old priory – which turned into a church, and then a cathedral last century – is steeped in English history.

The Medieval poet John Gower is entombed in a colourful memorial here, and his contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer set the opening to his Canterbury Tales at the Tabard Inn just around the corner.

St Saviour’s Church, as it was then, was the parish church for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and Shakespeare’s brother Edmund was buried in the now vanished churchyard. The famous view, pictured, of Jacobean London, was sketched by Wenceslaus Hollar from its Gothic Tower.