Author: T. J. Hughes.

Illustrated in colour, this volume encompasses a millennium of Churches around Wales. It is an invaluable repository of history, art and architecture which will appeal to the historian and tourist. Reprint; first published in 2006.

If, like me, you are a compulsive visitor to churches, large and small, this is the book for you. Those represented are among Britain’s great unheralded treasures and this beautiful volume reveals them at their best in both words and outstanding photographs. History, art and spirituality are the threads which the author draws upon to weave his material into an inspirational record and celebration of the joys of our holy heritage over the centuries.

Mr Hughes has written an illuminating, and fairly long, introduction and this is followed by the main body of the book, in which we are presented with region by region coverage of a very wide range of places of worship, some in very remote countryside.

I was glad to find one of my favourite churches here, the beautiful white-washed one at Mwnt in Ceredigion. With its low doorway, its plain deep windows and its location above the Cardigan Bay coastline, it conveys an atmosphere of antiquity. As Mr Hughes writes: ‘Mwnt is a survival of the ancient urge to worship where nature is most elemental.’

For decades England has had Pevsner, Betjeman and Alec Clifton-Taylor. They may be dead but their publications on churches are widely read by a wide readership. T.J.Hughes is a star in the same orbit in his native Wales and he has an elegant prose style which ensures that our interest never flags.

Keep this book in the car when you are travelling around this summer and try to obtain admission to some of the churches included. It is a sad reflection of the age in which we live that so many of our places of worship are kept locked for much of the time.

Dewi Roberts

A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Awdur: T. J. Hughes.

Cyfrol mewn lliw llawn yn cynnwys mil o flynyddoedd o Eglwysi yng Nghymru. Dyma storfa werthfawr o hanes, celf a phensaernïaeth fydd yn apelio at yr hanesydd a'r ymwelydd. Adargraffiad; cyhoeddwyd gyntaf yn 2006.