The Pipe Organ That Played Without Power

In 1944, Allied bombs had reduced much of Coventry, England, to rubble. The medieval cathedral lay in ruins, its famous pipe organ nothing but twisted metal and shattered wood. When the war ended, the congregation gathered in what remained — no roof, no walls to speak of, just stubble and sky. A young organist named Harold Britton sat before a borrowed harmonium so small it looked like a toy beside the cathedral's ghosts.…