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.