How to Look at Stained Glass
By Jane Brocket
IB Tauris, 256pp, £12.99/$20
Almost as soon as I began reading Jane Brocket’s How to Look at Stained Glass, a certain feeling of melancholy crept over me, which I didn’t manage to shake off for the rest of the book. Why so? This is, after all, a guide to church windows in England that is full of warmth, enthusiasm and great knowledge for its subject matter and graced, naturally, by beautiful illustrations.
Then it dawned on me. In these pages I was hearing some more of the last pebbles gently loosening in the “long, withdrawing, melancholy roar” of the Sea of Faith, first detected by Matthew Arnold on Dover Beach. This book scouts out churches and their windows as hunting grounds for art historians and culture vultures. But churches as places in which to give glory to God and to try and save our souls? Not so much.
