Cathedral of St Nicholas

This church stands half-way between the British Embassy, where I play squash and Smolenskaya where I run master-classes. So I pass it at least once a week. But gilded cupolas always look best against a sunny, blue sky, as today.

The church was founded in 1686, the year New York received its urban charter and also the year King James VII and II appointed four Catholics to the English Privy Council, thereby setting in train the series of events that were to lead to the Glorious Revolution, or Protestant coup, two years later.