Many cathedrals are so old, large and familiar that it’s tempting to see them more as a landscape feature than as something someone built. Like an ancient crag, they sit at the heart of their cities. They seem somehow inevitable and also unchangeable: permanent, immutable, inert.
In her latest book Emma Wells offers a somewhat different perspective. Her short, punchy chapters tell the stories of 16 different cathedrals – from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Above all, she recreates the building histories of the great Gothic cathedrals constructed in England and northern France, showing that these apparently sempiternal edifices were in fact the outcome of deliberate decision, fierce determination, creative improvisation and luck.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for many readers will be the realisation of just how often cathedrals burn down. Amiens, Chartres and York were hardly unusual in experiencing catastrophic fires almost every hundred years – at Amiens the flames came so frequently and conveniently that many, probably rightly, suspected arson.
