Gildas, the British historian, in the sixth century, wrote: "We certainly know that Christ, the True Son, afforded His Light, the knowledge of His precepts to our Island  in the last year of Tiberius Cæsar." Elsewhere he affirmed that "Joseph introduced Christianity into Britain in the last year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar." Tiberius died on 16 March AD 37, which supports the traditional date for St Joseph of Arimathea mission to Britain of AD 36. Britain was outside the Roman Empire, as the Claudian invasion did not occur until AD 43.

Martin of Louvain, in his Disputoilis Super Dignitatem Anglis it [sic] Gallioe in Councilio Constantiano (1517), recorded: "Three times the antiquity of the British Church was affirmed in Ecclesiatical Councilia. (1) The Council of Pisa, AD 1417. (2) The Council of Constance, AD 1419. (3) Council of Siena, AD 1423. It was stated that the British Church took precedence over all other churches, being founded by Joseph of Arimathea, immediately after the Passion of Christ."

On page 87 of The Grail Church, I wrote: "To the native Celts the Grail Church became known as the British Church; so as to distinguish it from the Anglo-Saxon English Church. When the Anglo-Saxons adopted Roman Christianity the British Church receded until it eventually vanished. Yet the memory of the Holy Grail could not be eradicated; indeed, its symbolic potency only grew with the passing of time."

The year I began my personal quest for the Holy Grail - 1977 - is also believed by some scientists to be the pivotal point for mankind from which there is no turning back. The effect of global warming is one of many symptoms of an ostensibly doomed planet. It is further thought that the search for another planet where sanctuary might be found is unlikely to materialise in time. Hence a small number of scientists are now turning their attention from space travel to time travel. Yet the prospect of wandering in time is no more attractive than the prospect of being lost in space. The real journey is one that lies within each of us: the journey to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The search in 1977 eventually led me unveiling that gnarled piece of olive wood known as the Nanteos Cup. Like Wagner in 1855, whose discovery of the relic inspired his opera Parsifal, I sought the Nanteos Cup in the hope of resolving whether or not this was indeed that venerated vessel wherein the first Eucharist was celebrated. Yet the intervening two decades has taught me that such a spiritual journey is within oneself; that these riddles are seldom, if ever, resolved by viewing an artefact deemed sacred.

The last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, entrusted the wooden Cup to his monks. They fled with the vessel to escape the appalling vandalism wrought by Henry VIII where it remained temporarily safe in the remote, now ruined, Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida in Wales. When the King's men extended their search, the monks fled again with the Cup and took refuge in the isolated house of Nanteos, which was owned by farmers some seventeen miles from the Abbey. The final words on the breath of the last remaining monk as he died were that the resident Powell family should guard the Holy Cup "until the Church shall claim her own," which, in a sense, now it has.

The Nanteos Cup, as it was now called, remained at the house for over four centuries. It remained in the house, as stipulated in the Powell family will, when the estate passed to Mrs Elizabeth Miryless, a daughter of the late Mr Powell's cousin. The new owner became a devout believer in the healing properties of the Cup and, for a period, met with countless appeals for water that had been left to stand in the vessel. One week witnessed at least one and a half thousand pleas via correspondence from far and wide. The strain became too much, and in 1967 Elizabeth Mirylees sold Nanteos House and moved to a secret address in Herefordshire. The Cup, now pitted with teeth marks from over-zealous pilgrims, darkened with age, and reduced to one third of its original size would at one time have measured five inches in diameter at the top and about three inches in depth, tapering to a base about two and a half inches across.

Neither I, nor anyone else, can know whether this is the holy vessel of the Last Supper, but reports of amazing cures are real enough. And a foremost authority on Palestinian archaeology, Sir Charles Marston, who travelled to Nanteos in 1938, would not dismiss the possibility that it was the Holy Grail. Such a quest, in truth, has no end. Perhaps we must remain uncertain about matters of this kind? Faith must be sufficient; not faith in an ancient relic - but faith in what it represents, ie union with God, in the certain knowledge that the only way to the Father is through the Son.

Three years before the end of the last century, the Nanteos Cup (and the healing ministry that had sprung from it) was revealed to the world in a British television programme, plus an American documentary. The healing properties attributed to the Cup via cloths anointed with oil and water given to the afflicted persons were examined and discussed in both television films. The cures would ultimately be the effect of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19: 11-12) along with the phenomenon of Divine Healing. The American documentary is regularly transmitted in the United States, or another part of the world. Every week requests are made for prayer cloths that have been anointed and blessed in the Nanteos Cup. Any healing that takes place is a gift of God's grace made available to us through the atoning ministry of Jesus Christ who suffered and "Himself took away our infirmities, and carried away our diseases" (Matthew 8: 17); "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross … for his wounds you were healed" (1 Peter 2: 24). To "heal" simply means to recover.

The Holy Grail was considered to be a relic of inestimable value as the Cup of the Last Supper that was later used by St Joseph of Arimathea to collect a few drops of the Saviour's blood. Apocryphal writings credit St Joseph with possession of the Cup. "Cardinal Baronius, curator of the Vatican Library and certainly the most outstanding historian of the Roman Catholic Church, writes in his Ecclesiastical Annals in reference to the exodus of AD 36: 'In that year the party mentioned was exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or oars. The vessel drifted finally to Marseilles and they were saved. From Marseilles [St] Joseph [of Arimathea] and his company passed into Britain and after preaching the Gospel there, died'." [The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page 30.] Thus the Holy Grail came to the British Isles where, six centuries later, it went missing. In later legends, as a result of the Holy Grail being lost, the country was strangely afflicted with large areas becoming an uninhabitable wasteland. Those who ventured there died. And a sixth century monk named Gildas wrote a history [Gildæ sapientis de excidio et conquestu Britanniæ] which spoke of a great famine and disease that rendered the island of Britain virtually uninhabitable, resulting in mass migration to the Continent. He attributes the catastrophe to the Britons' loss of faith. There are parallels with then and now. A steep decline in moral attitudes and social behaviour, plus, more significantly, the distortion and loss of faith, makes us ripe for a coming wasteland. There is a difference, however, because this time it might be on a global scale.

Perhaps we ought to reflect on what we have allowed to happen to our world and are continuing to permit?

I was born in the closing months of a terrible world conflict, and have witnessed the world waging war on itself ever since. Man's inhumanity to man leaves me convinced more than ever that our only salvation is in Him who shed His blood for the atonement of our sins. But it must be to the Christ of the Gospels, revealed through the Word of God, and not to a distorted image that we look.

When we arrived in London from Ireland, having settled in a first floor flat in Islington, my father ordered a rosewood piano to be delivered. It remained with my parents to the end. On this instrument my mother would play her beloved Chopin in those early days. When we translated to the Mansions, where Fred the porter and Alice the cleaner were part of the fixtures and fittings, the piano naturally followed. Its final destination was the Islington house my parents purchased within a short walking distance.

The children at Hungerford School loved my mother. They called her "flower face" because of the curls around her constantly smiling face. She was at her most beautiful during this period and attracted many admiring glances - yet she remained ever childlike and innocent, charming everyone along the way to the end of her life.

Despite the transparent naîvety that never left her, my mother always led the way and made things happen. She wanted a child. My father was less convinced. When we returned to England from overseas, my mother would be the one to discover and organise each  of our homes. It became apparent to me in later life that my mother earnestly wanted for me the romantic fulfillment she had been denied all along.

Mrs Brown, a somewhat severe-looking "governess" figure prior to my starting school at the age of five, was in truth a warm and kind person who taught me that "don't cares are made to care!" Something I would remember for the rest of my life. Though austere, these were lovely, enchanting times — and London was still then a wonderful city in which to enjoy them. I was blessed to be alive in a time of common courtesy, considerate behaviour, and gentle folk; qualities sadly now a rare commodity.

I recall my father taking me on trips to where much of London remained a wasteland of bomb craters and semi-ruins, particularly the city and docklands areas. The three of us would enjoy summer picnics on Hampstead Heath, watching the model boats on Highgate Pond. In the winters there would be coal fires and snow, which the horse-drawn milk cart would have to negotiate most carefully. Lamp-lighters would arrive every evening to kindle the gas lamps that still abounded.

Christmas was very special. It meant visits to the huge Gamages store, near Holborn Circus, and Santa Claus arriving on Christmas Eve in the snow via a Gamages van stuffed full of toys and games. First on my list was always a Rupert annual. Few of these childhood gifts have survived, save the much treasured Rupert annuals and a Hornby Dublo train set with many additions. Moreover, there existed then a quite palpable and almost Dickensian Christmas spirit among folk. These were the last days of England comprising of that recognisable stock who held fast to their faith.

My mother was a sweet and innocent soul who sought beauty and goodness where it seldom seemed to dwell. She sang, wrote poetry, and played the piano a little (especially her favourite composer, Chopin) when she was young, but the ultimate prize of happiness, as envisaged in her heart, seemed to elude her. So she stopped doing these things, as life itself grew tiresome with the inevitability of compromise. Yet a sparkle in her blue eyes remained from a time when dreams had not entirely flown.

Dorothy Woodward was born at a time when the previous world conflict had practically wiped out an entire generation, and was growing tired by the spring of 1918. Her paternal grandparents, both quiet by nature, had a farm in Derbyshire. The abode of her maternal grandparents, also located in Derbyshire, was the destination for Christmas holidays. These would be spent with her parents who themselves resided in close proximity to Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest

Once the habitat of the celebrated poet and his ancestors, Newstead would become a symbol of all that is Gothic and Romantic, which now, irrevocably, has slipped into the reservoir of fragmented memory. This is where I played as a child in the avenues of sombre forest trees in Lord Byron's gloomy abode where the fading twilight coupled with the moan in leafy woods to herald the filmy disc of the moon.

My mother had been the second-born of five children, and easily her father's favourite. Her mother, however, not only favoured the first-born, but eschewed Dorothy for some reason not understood and certainly not explained. Attempts were made to reconcile the schism, but to no avail. It would remain a mystery; especially as my mother was so palpably honourable and kind. My father described her as "the most endearing and the prettiest of the three daughters." The two remaining children were boys. The cold treatment from her mother induced a terrible sadness into her life that never quite departed. This would not be resolved by marriage to the man she met on an outing to the seaside when she was nineteen.

In the summer of 1937, my father stood on a swaying, overcrowded train heading for Skegness, a seaside resort on England's east coast, when a young lady, seeing he had been on his feet for some duration, offered her own seat. They chatted briefly and the nineteen-year-old presented her card. This permitted chaperoned outings over the following months, culminating in a registrar office wedding on 30 October 1942.

Arthur Allen Manchester, a musician, as the Second World War loomed, turned his hand to clerical work, then became an accountant and, much later, a company secretary and director. My mother, despite her artistic nature and romantic heart, was restrained in many ways. Her husband leaned more toward the radical fringes. His left-wing politics earned him few Brownie points with my mother's arch-conservative family. Ostracism, albeit slow, was inevitable as the years went by. My mother sought solutions, and always led the way to make things possible. The aloofness experienced from her own mother, however, continued and indeed increased throughout married life.

Most of all, my mother wanted a child. My father was less enthusiastic. Nonetheless, I was conceived during October 1943, as the war in Europe prepared to reach its climax. Thus, nine months later, came into the world "the great, great, great grandson of the famous poet, through an illicit liaison between his lordship and a maid at Newstead Abbey." [The Highgate Vampire, BOS, 1985, page 123.] Many years later, I would thank leading Byron scholar Professor Leslie A Marchand "for his help and comments in private correspondence about the 'records of births and deaths of the lower (servant) class in those days' when trying to establish facts about the poet and Lucy, my great, great, great grandmother." [Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, Gothic Press, 1992, page 13.]

Owning this blood connection would lead to certain expectations, as reflected in the following observation: "He was invited to appear on Central Television's Saturday Night Live, but only on condition that he 'dressed like Lord Byron'." ["The Byronic Man" by Tim Baggaley, Velvet Vampyre, 1992, page 14.]

Lord Byron was seldom without consolation of the female kind and of the various servant maids who slipped between his sheets to keep him company at Newstead, Lucy was far and away his favourite. He called her Lucinda, but in the following lines she appears as Lucietta:

 Lucietta my dear,

 That fairest of faces!

 Is made up of kisses …

A letter, 17 January 1809, to John Hanson confirms that "the youngest is pregnant (I need not tell you by whom) and I cannot have the girl on the parish." On 4 February 1809, Byron wrote to Hanson: "Lucy's annuity may be reduced to fifty pounds, and the other fifty go to the Bastard." He had originally provided her with an annuity of one hundred pounds. Three years after making Lucy pregnant he put her in charge as revealed in a letter to Francis Hodgson, written from Newstead on 25 September 1811: "Lucy is extracted from Warwickshire [where his and her son had been weaned]; some very bad faces have been warned off the premises, and more promising substituted in their stead … Lucinda to be commander of all the makers and unmakers of beds in the household."

Byron's letters might suggest a callousness in his relationships that is perhaps unwarranted, but when his illegitimate child by Lucy was born, he wrote a poem in which he hailed his "dearest child of love." He had always wanted a son and Lucy provided him with his first and last.