My discovery today is a book on English Cathedrals, published by Thames and Hudson, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann and an Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. It’s familiar to me as one of a small number of what I thought of as sacred texts kept on a table in my parent’s drawing room and so I was surprised that it was actually a gift from me to my parents, presumably on request, when I was eleven (price 57s. 6d.). Hürlimann was not so much a professional photographer as a publisher, based in Zürich, who had written a doctoral thesis on the eighteenth-century Swiss Enlightenment and took technically beautiful, but slightly bland photographs all over the world on a Sinclair Una camera (James A. Sinclair was a camera maker based in Whitehall).
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Few English buildings have been more written about than our Cathedrals – David Lloyd Edwards, John Goodall (wonderful photographs) and, more recently, by Patrick Cormack and by Simon Jenkins. They are, indeed, remarkable, and very beautiful.
I have the same edition and it’s companion English parish churches ( by graham Hutton and Edwin smith) . These also given to me by my mother but I Worry this may not have been in answer to a knowledgeable request , although rare omission of loving maternal dedication suggests it just might have been . Have used cathedrals from time to time , not so parish churches .
Ps love Matisse and his studio objects.
Dear James, I seem only to have inherited Cathedrals, not Parish Churches, which I’m sure they also had (and has better photographs by Edwin Smith). Glad you like Matisse ! Charles