Taylor Lee is an Anglican priest in Llangollen, North Wales. He trained for ordained ministry at Ripon College, Cuddesdon in Oxford. He was born in Bolton where he spent many weekends during university vacations at a working men’s club entertaining patrons on the organ and pulling pints behind the bar. As an undergraduate, he was organ scholar and choirmaster at Lampeter University. During his school days he spent a summer vacation studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is a Chairman of The Players’ Theatre Club and a member of the British Music Hall Society and The Club For Acts & Actors. In Llangollen, he is a member of the Music & Staging Committee for the Llangollen International Eisteddfod which welcomes choirs and dancers from all over the world every year. In 2019, Lee made national headlines when he revived a sixteenth century prayer for blessing ale which he used for the Real Ale train on the Llangollen Heritage Railway. During the Covid lockdown periods, Lee initiated an online (live stream) sing-a-long for his congregations, taking hymn requests and narrating the historical background to each hymn. What began as a local ‘Hymns & Pimms’ online event soon grew to embrace a worldwide audience. This story made the National Press and became a weekly live stream sing-a-long. Lee was interviewed about this for a special feature of BBC Songs of Praise. He is currently studying a research degree in Religious/Mystical Experience at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, Lampeter. This year he took part in the Near Death Experience Spectrum at The Monroe Institute, USA. Following this experience, he has been invited to write a paper for the journal of The Churches Fellowship of Psychical & Spiritual Studies. He is also pursuing an informal study on laughter and the spiritual life as well as researching the life of Fr Stewart Headlam, an Anglo-Catholic priest who defended the louche world of the Music Halls in Victorian Britain.

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