The tiny church of Saint Julian’s in Norwich draws pilgrims from all over the world to seek the place where Julian of Norwich, it's most famous anchoress, lived and wrote her book. During its thousand year history the church has seen prosperity, plague, and poverty. Its wealth of stories is explored in this engaging book.
There's the 50 year incumbency of father and son rector's who spent so little on the church that the chancel collapsed. And the rector who spent so much that he decamped, leaving unpaid bills. It tells of its near destruction by wartime bonds, and the faith that led to its rising from the ruins. It explores the history of artefacts in the church, some of them donated, some salvaged from the rubble, even one retrieved via eBay.
Maps and pictures show how church and parish have changed over the years, and throw new light on the location of Julian’s original cell.
Marjorie Kemp's verbatim account of her conversation with Julian is included. And it traces the means by which Julian’s writing, long kept secret, has emerged to become one of the most in influential spiritual books of the 21st century.
Sheila Upjohn is the translator of the best-selling Enfolded in Love, and her expanded version All Shall Be Well, The Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich Abridged and arranged for Daily Reading and has published a new edition of her ever-popular In Search of Julian of Norwich.
Nick Groves is an acknowledged expert on the mediæval churches of Norwich, who published The Medieval Churches of the City of Norwich in 2010. He has a particular connection with St Julian’s, as he was the organist there from 1981-1992, and was involved in the early stages of setting up the Friends of Julian of Norwich and the Julian Centre.