Cathedral scribes were notoriously partisan and sometimes downright dishonest when it came to the history of their buildings. Abbot Suger, who led the 12th-century building of Notre-Dame de Saint-Denis – in many ways the template for every Gothic church that followed – understood it was more than daylight that his abbey’s great windows let in, it was the divine.

Legend has it that a congregation of devout lay-people worked for free to help build this extraordinary cathedral, which had higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than seen anywhere else in Christendom. Scene Two: Salisbury, the ceremonial laying of the first five foundation stones of the new cathedral after its move from Old Sarum.

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. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. 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.

Captures the particularity of these cathedrals, and…is filled with tales of local patrons, craftsmen and the wider politics of the kingdoms in which these cathedrals were built. 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. Heaven On Earth – an illuminating narrative of the conception and legacies of sixteen of the world’s greatest cathedrals – is interwoven with an exploration of the lives, legends and scandals of the people who built them – both up on the pinnacles and down in the crypts.The glossary of technical terms provided is useful and the photography is wonderful; but some drawings to illustrate the more detailed descriptive passages would have been welcome.