SEPTEMBER BOOK OF THE MONTH | Emma recommends... Church Crawling: the Secret Lives and Hidden Stories of England's Churches - Rachel Morley

Emma says... As a building conservator and head of the organisation Friends of Friendless Churches, Rachel Morley is the perfect person to unpack these incredible buildings, histories, and stories for us - and she does it brilliantly. Holding throughout onto her central question of how and why church buildings draw people to them even as the faith and communities that created them continues to decline, Morley gives fascinating technical insight, strong and colourful historical context, and beautifully placed anecdotes. The whole comes together to give a read that is as layered and entrancing as the buildings it celebrates.

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The poet John Betjeman coined the phrase ‘church crawling’ to describe his days out visiting churches. In the spirit of Betjeman, Rachel Morley’s book captures the magical experience of poking around a dusty village church, only to have it transform – through her expert eyes – into a portal to the past, one that brings England’s people and history to life in the most colourful, moving and unexpected ways.

Through their wall-paintings and monuments, their graffiti and plaques, their jumble of furniture and curios, Morley shows these buildings to be the expression of centuries of communal memory and folk culture – time capsules of connection to ancient and medieval ways of thinking, to revolutions and wars, to lives both glorious and humble.