There are so many angels that an avalanche seems an appropriate noun. It’s unusual for there not to be an image of at least one angel, if not many in our churches and cathedrals and yet most know very little about them. We hear of tens of thousands in the Bible and other early texts but a surprise is how many of their names are known to us. Where do they come from and what are they for? We can see a hierarchy on the Nine Orders of Angels but that is rather general and devised in the 6th Century by Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. What about the rest of them? Are they male or female? And what do they look like? Angelic beings wearing white nighties and gold wings are more of a Victorian concept and it seems that some of the biblical ones might not have had wings at all.

We talk about good people being angels, but were they all on the side of good?