Dear Friends

Welcome to the quarterly e-news for July 2026. It has been an significant few weeks for the Cathedral and indeed for the Friends.

New Dean 

On Thursday 16 July Bishop Sophie introduced Rev Canon Andrew Dodd as the new Dean of Coventry to a large gathering of colleagues, cathedral community members and city friends and dignitaries. Andrew is currently a Canon at Canterbury Cathedral and his appointment shows that the road between Coventry and Canterbury runs in both directions!

Having been on the interview panel representing the College of Canons, I am delighted that Andrew accepted our invitation to be the next Dean and I look forward to welcoming him to the Friends and working with him as your chair. https://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/news-and-updates/the-revd-canon-andrew-dodd-appointed-as-the-next-dean-of-coventry

New Patron

The Friends’ council are delighted to announce that the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the UK, Her Excellency Susanne Baumann, has agreed to become a patron of the Friends. She responded to our invitation on behalf of the role. All future ambassadors will become a patron, alongside the Lord Lieutenants of Warwickshire and the West Midlands. We look forward to welcoming Ambassador Baumann to Coventry in this role. https://uk.diplo.de/uk-en/01/embassy  

New Exhibition

It is 75 years since Basil Spence’s winning design for Coventry Cathedral was first revealed to the public, his drawings perhaps first alluding to the establishment of a modern church architecture in Britain. His proposal was one of 219 submitted in competition with other architects, though only 15 entries were effectively published. By contrast, the remaining 204 submissions were subject to ridicule following their exhibition at the King Henry VIII School in Coventry.

Now, on the competition's Diamond Jubilee, the 75 exhibition returns to Coventry’s unsuccessful entries as part of a wider study on the representation of architectural competitions and the unbuilt in Britain. Prioritising contemporary submission material and mediated debate, this exhibition identifies Coventry’s losing proposals as under-explored yet valuable contributions displaying an overlooked diversity of design in Britain’s early attempts to define a post-war ecclesiastical architecture.

The exhibition runs from 8th August to the 21st September and is being sponsored by the Friends. 
 

Friends Annual General Meeting 

The annual general meeting of the Friends of Coventry Cathedral will take place on Sunday 20th September 2026 at 2pm, in the John Laing Centre. In addition to the usual business of an AGM we will be joined by Harry Foley, the curator of the 75 Exhibition who will talk on the collection. This will give a final opportunity to members to view before the exhibition closes the next day. 

A light tea will be served at 3pm and a special evensong celebrating the work of the Friends will take place at 4pm. This gives us an opportunity to support in person the ministry of the choir, the Friends having provided funding for the choral scholars in recent years.

An event invite will be sent in due course to enable us to gauge numbers for catering.

Community of the Cross of Nails 

The Cathedral reconciliaton team and CCN will for the first time have a stall at Greenbelt 27-30 August at Boughton House near Kettering. If you are there, say hello and we hope this will promote further interest in the CCN and reconciliation. This is made possible due to the sponsorship of the Friends.

Friends in Conversation

As a community of Friends, our purpose is to support the ministry of Coventry Cathedral in relation to its building, music and reconciliation ministry. In order to highlight these themes and provide an opportunity for friends and guests to gather, we will be sponsoring a series of conversations across these three areas. 

Each conversation will involve a recognised expert and will involve a presentation followed by a facilitated conversation with the audience. The first conversation will take place in the Cathedral on Friday 13 November 2026 at 7pm, and given it the month when the Cathedral ministry focuses on reconciliation, that will our theme for the first event.

We are delighted and honoured the Katja Hoyer, a German-British historian has agreed to join us on this occasion. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Katja is the bestselling author of several books on German history, most recently Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. Her previous book Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for PEN's Hessell-Tiltman Prize. She was born in Germany and calls the UK home. 

Taking her theme from her latest book Katja will explore the remarkable story of Weimar, the German town that became both the birthplace of the Weimar Republic and a symbol of the rise of Nazism. Through the lives of its residents between 1919 and 1939, she reveals how democracy, culture and dictatorship collided in one extraordinary place, offering a compelling portrait of a society teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Drawing on the lessons of Weimar's past, she will also reflect on what this history can teach us today about the fragility of democracy, political polarisation and the choices societies face in times of crisis.

Please note this date in your diary. We will be setting up an events page and sending details, including registration in early September.

And Finally...

Julie Barnes reports: "Amici, a choir founded in 2008 as a collaboration between the Friends of the Cathedral and the Cathedral Music Department, gave a concert at Stoneleigh Church on Saturday 13th June. The programme, entitled "Music for a Summer's Evening" was a mixture of choral music, both sacred and secular, and readings, given by John Brassington. A small but appreciative audience heard music by Parry, Whitacre, Gjeilo, Stanford, and Gibbons, ending with an arrangement of Gershwin's "Summertime." Delicious refreshments were served in the interval and everyone agreed it had been a very good evening. To top it all, £100 was raised for the Choir Parents' Association which will help fund a chorister."

Please be in touch if you have any further suggestions for the work or activites of the Friends.

I look forward to seeing you at one of our events, and if possible the annual meeting in September.