Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England, Donington 2007. (257 & x pp, 80 plates). ISBN 978-1900289-870.

This research monograph, written during my Leverhulme Trust Research award in 2007, analyses the causes and consequences of the destruction of tomb monuments in Early Modern England and Wales.  Previously it had been rather complacently assumed that the English Reformation and the Civil War largely exempted tomb monuments from the onslaughts on religious imagery which almost effaced the entire legacy of three-dimensional medieval religious imagery.  In fact, as the book demonstrates, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, and the Reformations of Edward VI’s reign and under Queen Elizabeth led to the destruction of thousands of medieval monuments and permanently affected attitudes to the commemoration of the dead.  The book also shows that one positive consequence of these attacks was the jump-starting of Tudor scholarship and its rapid development in the seventeenth century.  Three chapters examined, as case studies, the tomb of King Arthur at Glastonbury, which was reconstructed for the first time; the magnificent Percy Tomb in Beverley Minster; and the superb group of monuments in Abergavenny Priory.  Throughout the book, attitudes to the monuments of the dead are related to contemporary theological, political and social developments.

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Image and Idol, co-authored with the Turner-Prize winning sculptor, Richard Deacon, London 2001 (72pp, 32 colour and 20 b&w plates). ISBN 1-85437-400-1.

This book accompanied the astonishingly beautiful, but also controversial, exhibition of medieval sculpture in Tate Britain, which I co-curated with the great contemporary sculptor Richard Deacon.  We selected the sculptures together after extensive travels through the country looking at images which I had short-listed.  Throughout, my objective was to introduce a new audience to some of the greatest works of English and Welsh medieval sculpture.  No medieval sculpture had ever previously been exhibited by the Tate.  Several of the major pieces exhibited were, in fact, previously unknown even to medievalist specialists.  Deacon designed a remarkable and important installation, carefully designed to place sculptures at their optimum viewing height, in ways which transformed the Duveen Galleries. Many of the sculptures were specially conserved for the exhibition and were returned to the churches from which they came in much better condition than they had been for centuries.

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Gothic to Renaissance: Essays on Sculpture in England, Stamford 1995 (212 & xii pp, 127 plates). ISBN 1-871615-76-3.

In this, the origins and development of the craft of sculpture in medieval England are analysed  Eight specialised studies were introduced by an extensive introduction.  Several themes run throughout the book: the range of sculptural materials and methods; the relationship between patrons and artists; the architectural context of medieval sculpture; and the impact of continental artists, especially the great Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who was in the vanguard of those who brought the Renaissance to England.  Careful physical examination of sculptures was conducted with the conservator Carol Galvin, who co-authored two of the papers.  There are chapters on the Tomb of Bishop William de Luda at Ely; on the evolution of the royal funeral effigy; on the imagery of the Octagon at Ely; on a statue from Bishop Alcock’s Chapel (subsequently stolen from Ely); on two early sixteenth-century sculptures discovered at Eton College; on the tomb of Dr John Yonge in the Public Record Office; and on the sculptural programme of Bishop Fox’s chantry chapel at Winchester Cathedral.

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Westminster Abbey Funeral Effigies co-authored with R. Mortimer et al., first edition Woodbridge 1994; second edition 2003. ISBN 0-85115-368-2.

In this book, I wrote all the art-historical analyses of all the funeral effigies of Westminster Abbey from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century.  These effigies played an important role in the funeral ceremonial of medieval royalty.  The later effigies include six associated with funerals and another five which were commissioned to maintain the series or specifically as tourist attractions.  Highlights of the book include the early funeral effigy of Edward III, dating back to 1377, Pietro Torrigiano’s effigy of Henry VII from 1509 and the figure of Admiral Horation Nelson, who was actually buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.

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