Great Lives Audio Stories
Use your mobile phone to dial up the year 1327
(or 1796 or 1941...)
Was Edward II brutally murdered with a red-hot iron or did he escape and flee abroad? How did a dairy maid and an 8 year old boy help Edward Jenner rid the world of smallpox? And was the loss of 723 men aboard HMS Gloucester at the Battle of Crete an avoidable tragedy?
You can now listen to the stories of seven of the people and events commemorated in the Cathedral simply by looking out for the ‘Great Lives’ signs inside the Cathedral, then dialing 0300 900 1327 on your mobile phone and selecting the relevant option for you chosen story. Calls to this number will be included in your mobile’s ‘free minutes’. Those who pay for their calls will pay their normal per minute charge for calling UK landlines.
If you’d rather not use your phone to listen, you can borrow a phone for free from the shop – just ask at the counter (£5 deposit required)
Or you can download the stories to your phone or MP3 player by clicking here (7 stories, 20MB in total.)
The seven stories featured in “Gloucester Cathedral Great Lives”
Robert “Curthose”, Duke of Normandy was William the Conqueror’s eldest son. Why didn’t he inherit the throne from his father, and how did he come to lose out on the English throne not once, but twice?
Edward II – an ineffectual king, forced to abdicate, then imprisoned and brutally murdered in Berkeley Castle in 1327. But is this the true story? Did Edward escape his captors and flee abroad to a very different fate?
Edward Jenner rid the world of the terrifying scourge of smallpox. But it was not for this that he received his highest scientific accolade.
Ivor Gurney was a gifted poet and composer haunted by depression. The Gloucester-born poet wrote some of the most memorable music and poetry of his era. But trauma in war and life gradually wore him down. He found sanctuary in striding out across the hills at night.
The battleship HMS Gloucester was sunk during the invasion of Crete in 1941 losing 723 officers and men. Could this tragedy have been avoided?
The Reverend Stanley “Sam” Davies was imprisoned in a Korean POW camp after the battle of Imjin River. Find out about his ordeals at the hands of his Chinese captors and how a scrap of toilet paper enabled his story to be told.
The celebrated composer Herbert Howells was touched by a personal tragedy that inspired him to create his masterpiece Hymnus Paridisi.