A city radiant as a bride

A city radiant as a bride. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926- ). First published in the quarterly News of Hymnody in 1987. Drawing on Revelation 21, it is a hymn on the subject of ‘citizens of heaven’; which was, at that point in the development in the Church of England’s alternative liturgies, the theme for the ‘Last Sunday after Pentecost’. Although since the replacement of the 1980 Alternative Service Book this is no longer the case, the same chapter from Revelation now appears as an option for All Saints’ Day (1 November). The hymn was written in August 1986 at Ruan Minor, Cornwall, and published in the following January; it later appeared in the author’s Songs of Deliverance (1988). Since...