1. John Wesley changed the opening word of Watts’s hymn from ‘Our’ to ‘O’ when he published it in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns, a change that has been almost universally accepted in subsequent hymn books. Watts’s poem, a paraphrase of Psalm 90, was written in 1714 shortly before the death of Queen Anne. The tune ‘St Anne’, almost certainly by Dr William Croft (1678–1727), was only attached to the poem in 1861, when it was published in Hymns Ancient and Modern. The tune had previously appeared in the 1708 edition of Tate and Brady’s book of psalm tunes as the accompaniment to Psalm 42 (‘As pants the hart for cooling streams’). The hymn has been sung on numerous occasions of national importance, including on BBC radio immediately before the declaration of the Second World War. It was also sung at Winston Churchill’s funeral, and is performed regularly at Remembrance Day services.

1. The tune ‘Rockingham’, to which the hymn is usually sung, was named after the Marquis of Rockingham, who was three times Prime Minister. He was the patron of Dr Edward Miller, the organist of Doncaster Parish Church from 1756 to 1807, who composed the melody.

2. Matthew Arnold, who heard ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’ sung in Sefton Park Presbyterian Church on the last Sunday of his life, was overheard singing the third verse several hours before his death a few days later.