Starting with the glorious 1934 novel The Nine Tailors by queen of crime Dorothy L. Sayers, set in the mystical, liminal landscape of the Fens and in the haunting world of ancient bell ringing, Suzanne explores the English art of campanology. Ringing in rounds requires intense mental and physical discipline – in the novel, the intrepid Lord Peter Wimsey rings bells for nine hours solid – and this communal activity already bound villages together in Tudor times. How did England evolve a form of music – the voice of a village – that is written as a sequence of numbers? Suzanne patiently walks Muriel through the mechanics of belfries and the mind-boggling mathematics of change ringing, strike intervals and vertiginous extents.
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