Books

We thought you might like to hear about a couple of books written by our members:

Downside Abbey ~ An Architectural History

Edited by Dom Aidan Bellenger and available from Merrell Publishers.

Described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘the most splendid demonstration of the renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England’, the Neo-Gothic church at Downside Abbey, Somerset, was built between the 1880s and the 1930s under the direction of some of the country’s most renowned ecclesiastical architects.

This elegant new book reviews the history and construction of this magnificent building, designed to rival the scale of England’s great medieval Gothic cathedrals. Contributions by distinguished architectural historians explore, among other subjects, Thomas Garner’s majestic choir, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s soaring nave and the exquisitely redesigned Lady chapel of Sir Ninian Comper. Generously illustrated throughout with drawings, plans, archival photography and dramatic new images by Paul Barker, one of the UK’s pre-eminent architectural photographers, Downside Abbey is an absorbing account of a remarkable place of worship.

The Unitarians: A Short History

Written by Revd Dr Leonard Smith and available as a Kindle download via Amazon.

This short history of Unitarianism concisely explores the origins and progress of a worldwide liberal religious tradition committed to principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance.

Unitarians have exercised an influence out of proportion to their minority status. Through their agency, Poland and Transylvania enjoyed periods of religious toleration. In Great Britain, as pioneers of early modern higher education in Dissenting Academies, they applied Enlightenment reasoning to the study of religion, science, and the humanities. In the United States, they led the Transcendentalist movement, the first major flowering of American intellectual culture.

This book traces the history of the separate but related Unitarian (and Unitarian Universalist) denominations in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, and touches on the new groups that have arisen, or are in the process of emerging, elsewhere in the world.

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