Grayson Perry

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Martial Rose and Julia Hedgecoe

The magnificent roof bosses of Norwich Cathedral are one of the great hidden glories of medieval art. There are more than one thousand of these delightfully carved and painted keystones in the high stone vaulting, dating from 1300 to 1515 and measuring between eight and twenty-four inches wide. The vast majority are figure carvings uniquely linked together in storytelling patterns, reflecting a variety of pagan, Christian, and folk subjects. Situated some eighty feet up from the floor of the cathedral, these ornaments are too distant to have been fully appreciated by worshippers over the centuries; by the same token, their inaccessibility has protected them from vandalism. This book reproduces the most striking and interesting examples, selected from the hundreds of exquisite color photographs taken by the distinguished photographer Julia Hedgecoe, under the auspices of the cathedral. They are introduced and fully described in a lively text by one of Norwich's foremost medieval historians, Martial Rose.

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Peter Fergusson, Glyn Coppack and Stuart Harrison

"Located in a beautiful tree-sided valley in the North York moors, Rievaulx Abbey stands as one of the pre-eminent medieval ruins in Europe. From 1132, for over 400 years, the monastery served Cistercian monks, and in its early decades was home to a community of 650 men. For the next 400 years, following Henry VIII's Suppression, the deserted buildings have continued to haunt the valley in an unforeseen after-life, stimulating memory of the monks and their spiritual endeavours, notably during the Picturesque and Romantic periods.". "This is the first book to study the architecture of Rievaulx viewing the buildings' 800-year history and the varying periods of construction and deconstruction as much in terms of continuity as disruption. In its elucidation of the architecture, extensive reconstruction drawings, and its examination of context, iconography and social and economic factors, this book offers a fuller and more scholarly account of the buildings of a great medieval institution than any currently available."--BOOK JACKET.

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Alfred Hiatt

"The Making of Medieval Forgeries argues that medieval forgeries were not simply acts of deception, but attempts to invest historical narratives with the authority of written record. Hiatt examines in detail cases of forgeries produced by and for monasteries, universities, and the English government itself, and finds that forgeries show a sustained and often creative engagement with the past."--BOOK JACKET.

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[by] Phoebe Stanton. Pref. by Nikolaus Pevsner

The most important exponent of the Gothic Revival in English architecture was Augustus Welby Pugin, who in a short working period, from 1835 until his death in 1852, designed more than a hundred buildings, wrote eight books, and established a flourishing business for the production of metalwork and stained glass. Pugin, a Catholic convert, who equated Gothic architecture with Christianity, expressed his profound religious convictions in his writings and in the building of such churches as St Giles, Cheadle, and St Barnabas, Nottingham. He also designed convents, monasteries, schools, and houses, but is perhaps best known for his superb decorations for the Houses of Parliament. Pugin was well ahead of his time in his advocacy of purity and function in architectural design, but his single-minded assertive perfectionism and fidelity to medieval style earned him many contemporary attacks. This authoritative study by Phoebe Stanton, Associate Professor of the History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University, constitutes an exhaustive and perceptive re-assessment of Pugin's status.