These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Combining scholarship and an eye for human stories, Heaven on Earth is a vivid, colourful and absorbing tour of the greatest buildings the medieval world produced.

Cathedral scribes were notoriously partisan and sometimes downright dishonest when it came to the history of their buildings. More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason's yard to the cloisters of power. Wells is an ecclesiastical and architectural historian, and in some passages the lure of architectural exposition impedes an otherwise lucid and absorbing narrative. She describes their origins, the striking and unusual stories attached to them and the people central to their history.We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Together, they reveal how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped modern Europe, and influenced art, culture and society around the world. It takes in their cultural landscapes, the physical settings, as well as the personal stories, relationships and tragedies that marked each architectural revolution, from the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, York Minster of England, where countless disasters (deliberate, accidental and foolish) wreaked havoc on its fabric, to the Hagia Sophia of modern-day Turkey in the south, an iconic landmark in which are entwined the legacies of medieval Christianity, the Ottoman Empire, resurgent Islam and secular societies. Stunningly illustrated and endlessly illuminative, Wells’ authoritative yet accessible volume on the golden age of the cathedral leads the reader on a fascinating journey through 1000 years of striking ecclesiastical architecture. As Emma tells us in this episode, her interest in cathedrals was sparked while she was studying history of art at university, where she became fascinated by “the elements of ecclesiastical buildings that you wouldn’t know were there unless you studied them”.

The emergence of the Gothic in twelfth-century France, an architectural style characterised by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, large windows and elaborate tracery, triggered an explosion of cathedral-building across western Europe. Rich in animated, erudite and compassionate storytelling about how people in the past expressed spirituality in magnificent physical form.He has written or reviewed for a wide range of other publications including The Economist, The Quietus, Slightly Foxed, The Spectator, and The Times.

He is the author of Impossible Journeys, There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of JRR Tolkien and The Favourite.

It has the sometimes supplicant, sometimes competitive, sometimes accommodating relationship with state power that was required to build something on this scale and at this expense.

An epilogue will then explore the evolution of the role and influence of the cathedral across art, culture, and society from Coventry to California, and the changing styles in our midst.Strikingly show[s] the influence these imposing buildings exerted [and] the importance of the people who built these places - History Today You may also be interested in. More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason’s yard to the cloisters of power. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Scene Two: Salisbury, the ceremonial laying of the first five foundation stones of the new cathedral after its move from Old Sarum.