In the gentle precinct of Aldminster Cathedral, crisis loomed. The urbane & worldly Dean (Purdey guns & the regular arrival of a delivery van from Berry Brothers) wanted nothing so much as to restore & beautify his beloved Cathedral
- even if it meant sacrificing the Choir School to pay for it. Alexander Troy, Headmaster of the school, a conscientious man, somewhat out of his depth with his elusive & poetical wife (once seen walking barefoot in the dew across the Cathedral Close) was determined that nothing & no-one
- certainly not the overbearing Dean
- should destroy the Choir. As the rift widened into machiavellian

Dimensions, many others found themselves caught in the schism
- Leo Beckford, brilliant but wayward organist, repelling the adoration of the Dean's dreadful daughter
- the gentle, left-wing Bishop, trying to soothe the angry protagonists
- Sally Ashworth, mother of the leading chorister, fighting loneliness & an erring & absent husb&. Each frail & human dilemma took its part in the greater turmoil of Chapter & Close & the final battle for the survival of the Choir.







...

In the gentle precinct of Aldminster Cathedral, crisis loomed. The urbane & worldly Dean (Purdey guns & the regular arrival of a delivery van from Berry Brothers) wanted nothing so much as to restore & beautify his beloved Cathedral
- even if it meant sacrificing the Choir School to pay for it. Alexander Troy, Headmaster of the school, a conscientious man, somewhat out of his depth with his elusive & poetical wife (once seen walking barefoot in the dew across the Cathedral Close) was determined that nothing & no-one
- certainly not the overbearing Dean
- should destroy the Choir. As the rift widened into machiavellian

Dimensions, many others found themselves caught in the schism
- Leo Beckford, brilliant but wayward organist, repelling the adoration of the Dean's dreadful daughter
- the gentle, left-wing Bishop, trying to soothe the angry protagonists
- Sally Ashworth, mother of the leading chorister, fighting loneliness & an erring & absent husb&. Each frail & human dilemma took its part in the greater turmoil of Chapter & Close & the final battle for the survival of the Choir.







...

' This book is about food for the soul. It is about the celebration of nourishment at all levels: physical, mental & spiritual'
-
...

Here are five gripping episodes of early Pern -- from the very first space survey recommending colonisation, to the last, where the early world, its young dragon culture undetected, is condemned to be isolated in space.

Here is the saga of the mass evacuation from the volcanic southern continent, an entire group of people moved across the dangerous seas, guarded & guided by a flotilla of dolphins. Here, too, is the story of the creation of Ruatha Hold -- a mammoth undertaking in the early days of Pern.

And here is one of the most fascinating dragon tales ever written by Anne Mc Caffrey, when Fort Weyr was the only weyr, & when dragonriders & dragons were overcrowded to danger point. As the news broke of three fresh weyrs to be established, a young girl, Torene, came to realize that her dragon could be the next Queen of the newly formed Benden Weyr.



...