There are so many angels there could almost seem to be an avalanche of them. 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 passers-by 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 in the Nine Orders of Angels but that’s rather general and was devised in the 6th Century. 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 the biblical ones were originally flightless – so when did they get their wings?