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
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
