Dorothy L. Sayers and William Temple

I'm delighted to report the publication of the latest Miscellany from the Church of England Record Society, which includes my own edition of and introduction to the correspondence relating to Temple's offer of a Lambeth D.D. to Sayers, which she refused. It's a most interesting episode, which reveals much about the position of the 'Christan writer' in England, and the relationship between the Church of England and the arts.

The Michael Harper papers

I note from the most recent annual review of Lambeth Palace Library that they have received the papers of Michael Harper. Once they are catalogued and released, these promise to be of interest in that Harper's wife Jeanne was co-editor of the hugely influential Sound of Living Waters song collection.

Religion in modern drama

An intriguing flurry of related items in the Guardian last month. Firstly, Michael Billington drew a contrast between the animating force of religious themes in much drama in the Fifties and the lack of religious interest in plays written in more recent years. This was in part a response to Drew Pautz's play Love the Sinner (reviewed, again by Billington, here).
This elicited a response from Ian Bradley, pointing out that religious themes were alive and well in the musical.
Finally, some enterprising soul in the Guardian's research department pulled out a most intriguing archive item from 22 May 1958, on a debate in the Church of Scotland's General Assembly over the future of the Gateway Theatre, which, improbably, was actually owned by the Church.