Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral’s first new official history for half a century.

Canterbury Cathedral has many faces. It is one of the world’s great living churches, a place of prayer and worship for over 1400 years. It is the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury, the mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion, and a work of supreme architectural beauty. It is the home of saints and martyrs, most famously Thomas Becket, and the focus of pilgrimage, as immortalised in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It is also a place of refuge and sanctuary, a centre of music, education and evangelism.

This new, illustrated history is written with the full cooperation of the cathedral and its archives. Following the installation of the first ever female archbishop of Canterbury, it takes a fresh perspective and includes short profiles of key men and women involved in its long story, such as Elizabeth Barton, a visionary nun executed by Henry VIII for opposing his divorce, and Ervin Bossanyi, a refugee responsible for extraordinary modern stained-glass windows. The book is fully illustrated throughout with sparkling new photography taken since the completion of a major conservation programme.