FAMOUS LONDON CHURCHES By C. B. Mortlock Famous London Churches
(Skeffington, 10s. 6d.) is a volume of short descriptions, by Mr. Mortlock, grouped around Mr. Maxwell's drawings. Neither the writer nor the draughts= man seems to be particularly interested in architecture, and, in fact, the churches chosen for discussion would give little scope for architectural analysis. Apart from St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey and Southwark Cathedral, they mainly date from the nineteenth century, and many of them are but the gloomier specimens of the Gothic Revival. Mr. Mortlock has, as he says himself, taken Mr. Maxwell's drawings as an example for a gossip about each church and his text is made up of remarks on celebrated incumbents and parishioners, on ecclesiastical quarrels and good causes associated with the various churches, with only the minimum admixture of matter about architects and builders. Mr. Maxwell's drawings show similar interest. From the point of view of architecture, photographs would have given a far better idea of the churches depicted, and the principal quality of the drawings is that they show the settings of the various churches and their relations to their surroundings. They convey almost as many facts about the parish as about the church. The Foreword by the Bishop of London is briefly episcopal.
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