100 Best Churches: An illustrated guide

London country: St Mary’s, Monken Hadley, at Enfield Chase, may look nothing like the familiar idea of London, but it features in Leigh Hatts’s London’s 100 Best Churches: An illustrated guide (Canterbury Press, £14.99 (£13.50); 978-1-85311-944-6). Each church has a colour photograph by the author, and a page or so discussing its features and history, and a few words about the current services and life of the church, with opening times and web addresses. Here are famous City churches: St Martin-in-the-Fields; the Temple Church; All Saints’, Margaret Street; St Augustine’s, Kilburn; and several Roman Catholic and Free Church buildings.

Leafy oasis: St Law­rence Whitchurch, Little Stan­more, is found at a gap in a long suburban street. Suddenly there is grass and a church beyond a lychgate. “Walk­ing into the building is like enter­ing a stately home,” writes Leigh Hatts in London’s 100 Best Churches.

Ancient and modern: the 15th-century nave of Isleworth Church stands roofless, owing to a fire in 1943, which was not war damage, but arson by boys. The new church by Michael Blee was opened in 1970. Syon House, the stately home across the Thames from Kew Gardens, is in the parish, and Turner sketched the old church.

This books are available from the Church Times Bookshop.