CATHERINE FOX’s latest novel (or is it the day-by-day journal of an observant heron or a kindly guardian angel?) takes her Lindchester cast of characters from Easter Monday 2021 to Mothering Sunday 2022. Here is another year in the life of this imaginary diocese somewhere between Lichfield and Chester, a year that begins at the end of the third Covid lockdown and ends with a pre-Easter April sunset.

The blogged-on-the-hoof real-time immediacy of The Company of Heaven sent me trawling through my diaries and photos of that time to map the saga on to my own memories. It was good to meet the familiar cast, along with some new characters.

Yet, in spite of the wicked humour and sympathy, the stories seemed darker in tone than in previous volumes, as though mirroring the ongoing aftershocks of Covid, the political scandals, the environmental concerns, and the rise in long-term anxiety and depression. More than once, I found myself in tears at the ordinary human sadness of it all.

A safeguarding scandal threatens two of our best-loved characters. Church choirs struggle to survive. Omicron comes and goes, the fields are flooded, petrol runs out, and Ukraine is invaded. The kind and the holy continue to care. But there is more edge: a sting of anger and savagery which is new. There is, perhaps, less confidence this time that the angels’ wings are ever around us, strong to save. We survive as the characters survive, but not without scars, taking what comfort we can from flowers and jewels, stars, ceramics, and bees.

Whatever ideals we might have about prayer and faith, Fox gently reminds us that we are flawed and mortal, that faith is a struggle, and that it takes courage and kindness to live well before God in this beautiful but troubled world.

The Revd Angela Tilby is a Canon Emeritus of Christ Church, Oxford.

The Company of Heaven: Lindchester Chronicles 5
Catherine Fox
Marylebone House £10.99
(978-1-910674-67-3)
Church Times Bookshop £9.89