A Review by Keith Smith

An exploration of British history through its most beautiful and influential works of art, not exactly a novel idea but when it’s done by the BBC with David Dimbleby at the helm you know a lot of thought and funding has gone into the project.  Seven ages written up by seven ‘experts’. They wouldn’t have been my choice, as the text is vapid, and either trite or full of generalisation. That is the penalty, I suppose,  of trying to write up an age and its art in a few pages..but it could have been done better. However, that is not to say I didn’t find this book to my liking. I did. I mainly looked at the pictures which are magnificent.

And if the underlying thesis of the book is that you can use art as a mirror to unlock the ‘feel’ of a particular time, get a grasp of its key issues, and see what was regarded as important, then it certainly succeeds. Thus for us with our increasingly secular society it is extremely difficult to appreciate just how important religion was to those who lived in medieval Britain. What enables us to get somehow on the same wavelength is the impulse that went into religious architecture from the humblest churches to the greatest abbies and cathedrals, and into religious art from the paintings that adorned the walls of the richest to the vivid iconolgy and frescoes and doom paintings that were so much a part of the life of everyone else.

I look forward to viewing the whole tv series , the camera is a terrific help in viewing our heritage in revealing ways, but the book will also have its place on my over-crowded shelves.