Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross is a book of praise for the churches which are so much a part of the British landscape, tradition and history. The author travels the country and tells interesting stories about individual places of worship but also about the people who use them or have used them in the past. The result is a book full of interesting facts and anecdotes that you want to read to your friends and family. The book was written in and around the pandemic and that time is part of the overall narrative that the author writes about how people connect and how sacred spaces have been used in different ways. I have read this author’s previous book about tombs and graves (see my review here) and although I enjoyed it I found that this book was more insightful about people and, as a result, more moving – maybe because these spaces are continually evolving and being rethought whereas tombs are static and unchanging.
The places that the author tells us about include religious buildings where people live and form communities and churches which appear to be abandoned but which have a faithful few people maintaining them. He tells us about St Paul’s Cathedral which was saved during the Blitz by the fire wardens who extinguished the incendiaries which were dropped and which threatened the building. The stories are often about faithful people, although cats get quite a big mention, and the book references people from the past as well as the present. The result is to give us an overview of Britain and its patchwork relationship with the Christian faith and its places of worship.
I really enjoyed this book which made me think and which introduced me to ideas about sacred spaces and the relationship of people of faith with their buildings that I would not otherwise have had.
Anne Is Reading 