cleve callison’s blog

Do but look up

I’d been to Salisbury Cathedral more than once, but on our last visit we decided to talk with a tour guide. He stood right at the base of one of the major columns at the crossing and asked us to look up. The height of the view alone would be breath-taking; but the curvature of the columns makes it startlingly vertiginous. The weight of Salisbury’s spire exerts so much downward force that the columns actually bend. Some believe the tower to be the only surviving large one from before 1400 A.D. William Golding’s bleak novel The Spire is an imagined story of its creation.