20 NOVEMBER 1993, Page 39

Christopher Howse

Easily the best book I have read this year is The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion, 1400-1580 by Eamon Duffy (Yale, £29.95) which shows that popular devotion was far from moribund on the eve of the Reformation.

Nor, I discovered, were most people anx- ious at the prospect of hell-fire; they confi- dently attended the liturgy and practised good works in the hope of cutting short their time in purgatory. Eamon Duffy's careful scholarship shows up the true tragedy of the Henrician and Edwardian despoliation.