BOOK of Common Prayer services bind the “traditional” parish church of St Andrew with St Mary at How Caple.

So the church is a obvious host for a heat in the celebrated Cranmer Awards – held in Hereford Diocese for the first time in many years.

This week, invites go out to Herefordshire youngsters with a flair for speech and drama to enter this national public speaking competition which offers cash prizes.

Contestants must stand in front of a small audience and read prepared passages from the historic Book of Common Prayer.

Winners from local heats go through to the national final in Worcester next Spring.

“This is a brilliant opportunity for school pupils to improve their public-speaking – and maybe even earn a few bob in the process,” said organiser Noel Manns, from Llangrove.

“The Prayer Book is one of the glories of world literature and contains some of the best-loved phrases in the English language. We hope families will get a real buzz out of taking part in this competition,” he said.

One of the judges will be Quentin Letts, theatre critic of the Daily Mail, who lives at How Caple.

He said: “We will be looking for clarity, sincerity and maybe a sprinkling of stage magic.

“But I don’t want to make it sound too X-Factor – the main thing will be familiarity with the text and a certain poise.”

The competition has two age groups - 11-14 and 15-18 - and entries should be between three and five minutes long.

The organisers will help children choose extracts from the Prayer Book and families will be invited to attend the performance, followed by a reception.

Entry to the event from 11.15am on Sunday, November 1, is free.

For more information, please email mail@mannsfamily.co.uk or telephone 01989 770297.

 

BACKGROUND – THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER

Herefordshire remains one of the national “hotspots” for use of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP).

In other parts of England, BCP use has faded.

But Hereford diocese still has many churches which use the historic text.

To many churchgoers, the BCP is the “real” prayer book and some regular worshippers come to know the prayers off by heart.

BCP remains the premier liturgy of the Church of England. Its marriage service is popular with modern brides and its burial liturgy is richly evocative and memorable.

Thomas Cranmer, a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. wrote and compiled the first two editions of the BCP.

A key figure in the history of the Anglican faith, Cranmer’s profile - in the context of Tudor politics - has risen with his depiction in the popular Wolf Hall novels of Hilary Mantel and their subsequent TV adaptation.

Cranmer died a martyr to the principles of the English Reformation, his legacy being the BCP and the Thirty-Nine Articles, an Anglican statement of faith derived from his work.