HEAVEN ON EARTH EMMA 1. WELLS Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals Emma J. Wells (Head of Zeus, £40)
EUROPE'S cathedrals are its most uplifting treasures. They towered over E their own age and have towered over ages ever since. They embody architecture's capacity to inspire devotion and awe in people of all faiths and none. Although today's churches are faltering, cathedrals are as popular as ever, for both worship and admiration. They seem to offer a timeless consolation to all comers.
Cathedrals were assertions of the temporal authority of the church and its bishops. Throughout the Middle Ages, as kingdoms rose and fell, they were centres of continuity and stability. As custodian of the afterlife, the Church defied royal authority. Its wealth was unequalled and, in return, it offered Europe administration, education, welfare and licensed travel, winning widespread loyalty beyond that of transient rulers. The Church could call on armies, summon crusades and ordain pilgrimages. For the best part of a millennium after the fall of Rome, it was the nearest Europe had to a unifying power. Cathedrals were its citadels.
How to describe these buildings other than with bland superlatives is a challenge. Every summer, the great cathedral of Amiens north of Paris in France holds a display of laser light and sound across its west front. The projection into the night sky appears to demolish the building and then rebuild it, inside and out, piece by piece, as if the masons were still at work. In a final burst, he façade blazes forth, its Gothic details restored in vivid medieval colours. The show is the closest we get to a medieval experience, rendering today's grey stonework something of an anti-climax ('In glorious technicolour', December 1, 2021).
This story is from the August 31, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 31, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
