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Publisher: Lion Hudson, London, 2008, £20.
ISBN: 978 0 7459 5190 4
Lion books are generally on the margins of reference publishing, having an education focus in a Christian context, but the quality and reliability of their richly illustrated and clearly written books has never been in doubt. It is with pleasure, therefore, that we welcome this densely illustrated and high quality account of church architecture to our shelves.
For millennia, churches have been a key element in the landscape of the Western world: the Agia Sophia in Istanbul with its enormous dome, Notre Dame in Paris with its flying buttresses and Gothic arches, St Peter's in Rome with its huge piazza, even the author's own "church", Salisbury cathedral, arguably Britain's finest, are universally recognizable icons. Beginning with a discussion of "sacred space" and the influence of environment on human experience, David Stancliffe traces the evolution of church architecture from biblical times to the present day, covering the early Roman house churches, through the development of the Eastern Church, to the architectural shifts of the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and beyond. Later chapters focus on the radical...