In Going to Church in Medieval England (2021), Orme wrote memorably about the experiences of parish-church attendees and clergy across England over the centuries of the Age of Faith. Now he focuses on grander buildings and statelier celebrations, showing how cathedrals emerged and evolved over 14 centuries, from their “Dark Ages” origins, through the Conquest and Reformation, to their half-life today as a splendid “heritage,” artefacts of a faith in which almost nobody in England now believes.
Orme, who apart from being an excellent historian is also an Anglican canon, is well qualified to place these monumental structures in their national, European, and Christian contexts. This is a book simultaneously deeply learned and piquantly evocative of an unrecoverable Europe.
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