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The Shell Guide to English Parish Churches
An illustrated guide to more than 500 churches in England.
Hardcover
First published August 1, 1993
6 people want to read
About the author
Robert Harbison
21 books7 followersRobert Harbison taught architectural history for more than 30 years, mainly at the Architectural Association and London Metropolitan University. He became a legendary figure for generations of students and his books earned him an international reputation as a historian and critic. Born in Baltimore, Bob first studied English literature and completed his doctoral thesis on the 19th century English industrial novel at Cornell University in 1969. After moving to London in 1974 he published his first architecture book, Eccentric Spaces, which applied a poetic sensibility to topics as diverse as gardens, maps, machines and ideal cities. It was Bernard Tschumi who, having read the book, invited Bob to lecture at the AA and thereby launched his teaching career.
Eccentric Spaces has become a classic but more architecture books followed, including Ruins and Fragments, Reflections on Baroque and The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable. Bob’s early books benefited from the fact that his wife Esther was an editor. Thirteen Ways, first published in 1997, is typically unconventional. It borrows its title from a Wallace Stevens poem but refuses the obvious implication, consisting of only ten chapters. Bob was a voracious reader and his learning was profound but it was always the direct encounter with works of art and architecture that ignited his passion. He very rarely wrote about buildings he had not seen. His 2009 book Travels in the History of Architecture is in one sense a traditional ‘survey’ with conventional chapter headings: Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and so on. But it is also, as its title suggests, a travelogue, the written record of a purposeful exploration of the world’s architecture over several decades.
Eccentric Spaces has become a classic but more architecture books followed, including Ruins and Fragments, Reflections on Baroque and The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable. Bob’s early books benefited from the fact that his wife Esther was an editor. Thirteen Ways, first published in 1997, is typically unconventional. It borrows its title from a Wallace Stevens poem but refuses the obvious implication, consisting of only ten chapters. Bob was a voracious reader and his learning was profound but it was always the direct encounter with works of art and architecture that ignited his passion. He very rarely wrote about buildings he had not seen. His 2009 book Travels in the History of Architecture is in one sense a traditional ‘survey’ with conventional chapter headings: Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and so on. But it is also, as its title suggests, a travelogue, the written record of a purposeful exploration of the world’s architecture over several decades.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 23, 2013
Wonderfully esoteric and evocatively descriptive, lavish photos, plenty of round here incl. Willen, Gayhurst. Wonderful col. photos, e.g. of Gayhurst’s “stretched pediments”, Willen’s redbrick box and the best you’ll probably ever see of Patrington or Lavenham (caught in low pale sunlight).
The descriptions are still better: Blythburgh, for example, where ”uneven tiles radiate from the raised font in all directions, an effect like a garden pavement or an extensive lawn”. The entry for St. Mary Redcliffe is a textbook demonstration of how to write such an entry; pithy, vivid, memorable and informative. The clerestory is “another building perched on top”; the porch opening “a mouth hung with seaweed” while the windows “make a ring of shadowy eyes or Gaudí teardrops”. Inside, the ribs are “rectilinear in the chancel, fractured in the nave, and violently cusped throughout”. The captions are, if anything, even more vivid: Edington is a “Braque landscape” , Cley a “proud moth-eaten display”. Irreverence is his motto: the church near Osborne, (St Mildred, Whippingham) was designed by Prince Albert but has “silly pinnacles”.
The descriptions are still better: Blythburgh, for example, where ”uneven tiles radiate from the raised font in all directions, an effect like a garden pavement or an extensive lawn”. The entry for St. Mary Redcliffe is a textbook demonstration of how to write such an entry; pithy, vivid, memorable and informative. The clerestory is “another building perched on top”; the porch opening “a mouth hung with seaweed” while the windows “make a ring of shadowy eyes or Gaudí teardrops”. Inside, the ribs are “rectilinear in the chancel, fractured in the nave, and violently cusped throughout”. The captions are, if anything, even more vivid: Edington is a “Braque landscape” , Cley a “proud moth-eaten display”. Irreverence is his motto: the church near Osborne, (St Mildred, Whippingham) was designed by Prince Albert but has “silly pinnacles”.
Displaying 1 of 1 review