At the Church Door
Roy Strong tells York Membery why the humble English parish church is a perpetual source of fascination and refreshment.
Sir Roy Strong, one of Britain’s foremost art historians and famously a former director of both the National Portrait Gallery and of the Victoria & Albert Museum, is the author of a series of acclaimed books but is perhaps best known for his outspoken diaries which were highly critical of leading figures in the art and political establishments.
Now he’s turned his attention to that most quintessentially English of institutions – the humble parish church – in his latest book, A Little History of the English Country Church.
Two other factors also inspired its publication. ‘I met my good friend A.N. Wilson for lunch a couple of years ago,’ he says. ‘We were discussing the slippage in people’s knowledge of the things that our generations took for granted – for instance, how people don’t even know how to look at a church anymore – and he suggested I ought to write a guide on the subject.’
Finally, Strong felt that the threat facing England’s parish churches, the majority of which are found in the countryside, was now so acute that it lent the book some urgency.
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