The grandeur of St Peter’s, the Baroque ecstasy of the churches at Cholula in Mexico, the intimate peace of Fairford Church in Gloucestershire…Throughout the world, amidst the increasing materialism of largely secular societies, churches attract travellers, tourists, historians and worshippers as almost never before. The reasons for this apparent paradox are not difficult to see, and they point to the widespread appeal of this spectacularly illustrated book. The clarity, knowledge and insight of Edward Norman’s chronological survey are supported and enhanced by a brilliantly researched collection of illustrations and photographs. The result is a perfect mix between the most-loved master buildings – from Hagia Sophia to Tokyo Cathedral – and the freshness of the less familiar – a mission church in Paraguay, a Baroque shrine in Goa. And we see how every age has found its own way of expressing its particular vision, down to modern times, ‘the great age of Christian expansion’, when the initiative seems to be shifting away from Europe to South America and Africa. The totality of Christian worship, a union of theology, spiritual experience and art, has nowhere been more fluently and movingly conveyed.