Quentin Letts: Why hymns are the true voice of England

When all seems too gloomy to endure, I take myself up to the British Camp in the Malverns, there among the windblown tufts and Iron Age ditches. With the rain lashing and my trousers flap-flapping like two Spithead flags, I lean on the gale and claim my birthright: to hum hymns of England and think of our forefathers.

The Camp, by legend the fort of gallant Caractacus, is this kingdom’s greatest hill. At 1,110 feet it is not the tallest. It is not the broadest, sharpest, steepest or most remote. But from that ridged summit (a wedding cake, say some, though from boyhood I’ve thought of it as an enormous nipple) you can see far into the three-choir counties: Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford. Hymnshire.

At Christmas we go all gooey over carols. An annual blast of ‘Hark the Herald’ is enjoyed even by Scroogey secularists. But church music in other seasons is just as good. Hymns are a buttress against ignorance. They are (as the Arts Council might say) accessible. It is time our politicians and institutions, not least the BBC, rediscovered them.

Hymns are the greatest expressions, in music and verse, of a certain type of Englishness. They pack giddying emotional force in taut metrical form, performed in sober public worship. Hymns are not self-absorbed. They do not collapse in a sobbing heap and moan that life is unfair. Hymns gave voice to this nation’s Christian sturdiness, its sense of mercy amid order. If teachers and BBC producers find that all a bit judgmental, let us try a different tack: hymns build a sense of community. They are our multi-denominational heritage. They can help children connect to poetry and music. There, is that less frightening?

The history of hymns has just been gazetted in a vast reference work, the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, currently online but eventually to be placed between hard covers.