Martin Symington Author

Born and raised in Portugal, Martin Symington paid yearly visits to his grandparents in Leicester. To return to this industrial city at the heart of Middle England years later, and find it pulsing with Hindu, Sikh and Jain temples was one inspiration for Britain's Sacred Places. Other seeds were sown when he followed in the footsteps of millions of medieval pilgrims across the salty sea cliffs of north Wales to drink miraculously clear, sweet water from a holy rock pool below the high tide mark; and when he first observed the remarkable similarities between the faith displayed at religious shrines and the ardent devotion shown by followers at the tomb of Karl Marx. Realising a sense of the sacred in 21st-century Britain takes manifold forms and is to be found in unlikely places, he set off on a quest which took him from Orkney to the southwest tip of Cornwall; and from the wilds of west Wales to the expanses of East Anglia. Time and again, he was astonished by what he discovered.