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A Cause for Caroling Episodes

  1. Ring in the New

    Jeremy Summerly ponders the success of new carols over the last century.

  2. Import and Export

    How the UK began to embrace carols from all over the world.

  3. The Birth of Nine Lessons with Carols

    Jeremy Summerly traces the familiar, traditional carol service back to Truro in 1918.

  4. Folk Carol Survival and Revival

    How the gallery tradition, squeezed out of 19th-century church worship, refused to die.

  5. A Second Golden Age

    By the mid-19th century, the singing of carols was once again hugely popular.

  7. 5. The Ghosts of the West Gallery

    Jeremy Summerly visits Dorchester where Thomas Hardy captured the caroling tradition.

  8. 4. Carol Crisis? What Crisis?

    Jeremy describes the impact of the Reformation and Puritan attitudes to music.

  9. 3. From Coventry to Agincourt

    Jeremy Summerly uncovers a developing professionalism in carol singing and writing.

  10. 2. Spreading the Medieval Word Made Flesh

    How the Franciscans used the carol to make the birth of Jesus a focus.

  11. 1. A Carol's a Carol, to Begin With

    Jeremy Summerly discovers what he believes to be the first carol written in English.