Westminster Abbey Official Guide

Dean and Chapter of Westminster

Published by Jarrold and Sons, 1969

About this Item

Westminster Abbey: where British history comes to lie down, preferably in stone, with excellent lettering. The Westminster Abbey Official Guide (1969), produced by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, is a calm and courteous introduction to one of the most crowded buildings in the country?crowded not with visitors (though there are plenty of those), but with monarchs, poets, scientists, soldiers, saints, and the lingering sense that nearly everything important has happened here at least once. This is a guidebook in the best traditional sense. It explains what you are looking at, why it matters, and how many centuries of ceremony, burial, coronation, and quiet national myth-making have been layered into a single structure. Chapels, tombs, monuments, and architectural details are all given their due, with the steady authority of an institution that has been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. There is a pleasing irony in reducing Westminster Abbey to a ?guide.? A place that has hosted coronations, sheltered kings, commemorated geniuses, and absorbed the entire emotional history of a nation is here politely summarised between covers, ready to be carried about and consulted as needed. History, it seems, can be footnoted. This good 1969 copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books, carries its own quiet sense of continuity. Slightly worn, perhaps handled by visitors who once walked those aisles themselves, it feels like a small portable echo of the Abbey?s long memory. Ideal for readers of British history, architecture, heritage, and anyone who enjoys the idea that a building can function simultaneously as a church, a monument, and a very distinguished guest list.

Seller Inventory # 6222

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Westminster Abbey Official Guide
• Publisher: Jarrold and Sons
• Publication Date: 1969
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair