About me

I have a vocation, and it’s to do with places; with communicating, enthusing, analyzing – in short, extollagising – about the nature of ‘old places’, and what makes them tick. I get especially excited about the sacredness of place, and the human place-making that results from it: a po-faced way of saying I love religious architecture in particular. English medieval churches are my academic specialism.

In any case, this a calling without a career structure. Writing lies at the heart of it, but like many writers I do other things which help earn a living and which arise from the expertise I’ve gathered on the way. But these, for me, are not add-ons: lecturing, teaching and tour-leading, academic research: each is an essential element in what is a seamless and overlapping range of concerns.

You might have come across my books, such as Cathedral: the great English cathedrals and the world that made them, published by Constable in 2007; The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces, published in late 2013; the Shire book of Medieval Church Architecture, which came out in July 2014. I am currently writing a major work on the British landscape: Stones of Britain: Geology and History in the British Landscape, slated for publication in 2023. You might also have come across my BBCTV documentary, How to Build a Cathedral, which was widely praised; I still broadcast from time to time, for example on BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Belief. I have co-edited or authored a number of academic volumes and papers, chiefly on west country churches, such as Bristol cathedral and the former collegiate church at Westbury-on-Trym.

Among other things, I lead tours for Martin Randall Travel and others; and am Cathedral Historian at Bristol cathedral, following several years as a Lay Canon ands Keeper of the Fabric there. I wrote, and now teach, an online course in English Medieval Cathedral Architecture run by the University of Oxford’s continuing education department. I am also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an accredited Arts Society lecturer. My piece of journalism about North Korea (east Asia plays a big part in my life: my wife is the Chinese author Liu Hong) for the London Review of Books some years ago was shortlisted for the David Watt Memorial Prize.