Country Church Monuments

A magnificent book - a tremendous achievement, a thing of beauty and a volume that should have a place on every church lover's shelves -- Nigel Andrew * Literary Review * Astonishing and beautifully photographed... The 365 examples chosen for full-page illustration and commentary here are the clotted cream of the milk of human mortality. Newham has visited 9,000 country churches in the past few years for his stupendous project of photographing every rural church in England. His travels with a camera make Cobbett's Rural Rides seem like a bank-holiday jaunt... Newham's pictures are a revelation -- Christopher Howse * Telegraph * This is a true labour of love and one of the most wonderful books I have ever seen -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail * A tour de force... Erudite... Church monuments may at first appear niche, but the subject matter deserves an audience beyond church crawlers or taphophiles. Funeral art provides a powerful insight into the culture and beliefs that they sprang from... Country Church Monuments is a treasure trove of sites just waiting to be discovered. -- Emma J Wells * The Times * Brilliant -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * A life-affirming survey -- Rose Washbourn * House and Garden * An excellent book... Its outstanding quality, however, is its photographs. Only someone who has craned their neck in semi-darkness to discern the contours of an effigy lying at eye level can appreciate, even if they cannot explain, the expertise of Cameron Newham's technique. In many cases perfect images are provided of recumbent figures taken from directly overhead, often defying the actual space above them.... A wonderful selection, warmly recommended -- Timothy Connor * The Tablet * The wonderful result of 25 years of meticulously chronicling over 8,000 rural English and Welsh churches - and the effigies, marbles, monuments and brasses inside them. Newham has picked out 365 of the best monuments he has found - a feast of the celebrated and the obscure and an enthralling map of our aesthetic and social history -- Lucy Lethbridge * The Oldie * What fortunate isles are these, to boast thousands of local sculpture galleries scattered through towns and villages, nearly all accessible for free: churches that host funeral monuments and memorials spanning more than a millennium. Newham's book is an incomparable means of sampling the very best across England and Wales - a personalised visit for every day of the year, in superb photography and informed commentary * Diarmaid MacCulloch * This beautifully produced gazetteer invites us to look inside our extraordinary wealth of parish churches and see afresh the impressive, the touching, the beautiful and the downright sinister in their monuments, from the fourteenth-century obsession with mortality and the cadaver or the flourishes of baroque new men to the vainglorious fanfares or sentimental doggerel of the nineteenth century. Knights lying with their faithful dogs or wives, busts coolly neoclassical or lavishly periwigged are all accommodated in miniature showhouses in the architectural style of their period. A happy bedfellow for Nicholas Pevsner -- Matthew Rice An enthralling testament to our ceaseless human striving for eternity -- Editor's Choice * Bookseller * Antiquarian CB Newham's book might seem more melancholy than merry. But it is a life-affirming survey of Britons through the ages * House and Garden *