EXPERIENCE has made us wary of sequels, while “listicle” books get a bad press as an oversimplified format; but don’t let any of that put you off Another Fifty Catholic Churches to See Before You Die. Like its 2020 predecessor of (almost) the same title (Books, 11 December 2020), the second volume of Elena Curti’s hymn of praise to post-Reformation Roman Catholic architecture in England and Wales is gloriously illustrated and crisply and intelligently written.
Moreover, slightly to my surprise, there is indeed another half-century of churches worthy of a visit by the growing army of “church-crawlers”, as Diarmaid McCullough fondly refers to the legions of walkers who prefer to go into churches when empty as a part of a Sunday afternoon walk.
© barry wadeSs. Peter, Paul and Philomena, New Brighton (Ernest Bower Norris, 1935), Merseyside Baroque and known as “the Dome of Home”. From the book under review
You can but marvel at Curti’s stamina. From St Tudwal’s, a little slice of the Tyrol in Barmouth, on Cardigan Bay, in the west, to the more conventional Gothic Revival (J. J. Scoles and A. W. N. Pugin) St Mary’s, Great Yarmouth, in the east, she has put in the miles. I could have done with fewer late-19th-century outsized parish churches masquerading as cathedrals in smaller cities, but there is plenty in here to delight all tastes.
Two beguiling exceptions to my general cathedral aversion make it in: Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, as fantastic and forward-looking with its luminous lantern tower today as it was in the 1970s during my childhood in the city; and the extraordinary (but firmly locked, when I have tried to get in, one recent Sunday afternoon) Brutalist, geometric Clifton Cathedral. From a distance, it looks more like a power station, in the best possible way.
Peter Stanford is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster.
Another Fifty Catholic Churches to See Before You Die
Elena Curti
Gracewing £14.99
(978-0-85244-999-8)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49