I Saw Eternity the Other Night: King's College Choir, the Nine Lessons and Carols, and an English Singing Style

'Erudite, original and surprisingly moving ... This Christmas, as at every Christmas, millions of listeners will have relished the ethereal King's choir ... Day's meticulous history of a special choral sound investigates the creation of a style, and the evolution of a tradition, that now feels as anciently English as the stonework of King's chapel itself' Boyd TonkinThe sound of the choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended, its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?It has been widely assumed that the King's style essentially continues an Eng