At school I didn't like history much but when I trained as a Methodist Minister two great teachers caught my imagination. So that was a start. Since then I've studied some of Frederick Faber's hymns and got a MA for my efforts. Then I got interested in my own heritage and wrote a history of the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book (UK) published as "O for a thousand tongues'. That's on Amazon and the research got me a PhD. Since then I've taught church history and liturgy to people preparing for ministry (at Luther King House, Hartley Victoria College in Manchester) and gone on studying hymns. I edit the Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland. I've run workshops in the US and Germany as well as the UK and lectured in Poland.Oh, and I've written well over 700 hymns many of which are in use throughout the world - see me at www.stainer.co.uk and many of my hymns are published regularly on www.twelvebaskets.co.uk.