This glossy and beautifully illustrated book does much more than update Linzee Colchester's earlier guide of 1987 with ‘more recent archaeology, scholarship and interpretation’. It focuses on the architecture and art of Wells Cathedral and complements the authoritative (but much more abbreviated) new edition of Pevsner's Somerset: North and Bristol (2011). It is particularly useful on recent developments, such as the reopened chapter house undercroft (2008), the new visitors’ centre (2009), the rearranged deanery garden and the current use of former canons’ houses. Future historians may be grateful for this information, although Dean Mitchell and other recent contributors feature rather prominently in the cathedral's thousand years.

The cathedral's building history is set out clearly and engagingly in the brief outline, which is then supplemented by another nine chapters on the west front, choir, cloister, the precincts and environs, and so on. Although deliberately derivative – van der Zee seems to have orchestrated a team – academic debates and disagreements are properly reviewed, Colchester featuring as merely one (but a respected) authority. There are the lists of bishops and deans, vital statistics of the buildings and a glossary needed by a popular audience. The outline sets out the stages in construction – from building break to building break, for example, the death of master mason Adam Lock in 1229 – that are then expanded and documented in the individual chapters.

The second chapter, for instance, relies heavily on Jerry Sampson's Wells Cathedral West Front (1998), setting out the building history and the addition of the western towers and providing a catalogue of the subjects of all the sculptures and those originals now in the Wells museum, plus details of some capitals. There are openings in the west front for trumpets to sound and choristers to sing – one photograph shows the gallery from inside. The account of the nave records those details that are so easily overlooked: the southern triforium gallery for a few choristers, the corbels for the first organ loft and even the socket for the medieval rood cross. The floral pattern of the vault was reconstructed from surviving traces – yet we are informed also that variants have since been discovered. This guide stands upon an archive. Such points are often illustrated: photographs and reconstructions full-page and thumbnail, generally full colour, feature on almost every page. Although originally the crossing scarcely projected above the nave roof, there is evidence of early reinforcement both of the nave and triforium, yet from 1313 work commenced on the huge central tower with its cap spire. So great was the subsidence into the soft ground that the remarkable scissor arches were inserted, although they were less effective structurally than symbolically as the structural movement ceased anyway.

The spire was struck by lightning in 1438 and removed. The open lantern, which brought light and draughts to the centre of the building, was replaced by the fan vaulting about 1475. There is much here about the stone used – Doulting, Blue Lias and Chilcote – and its qualities, what it was used for and why. Following destruction of the abbey church by fire, Glastonbury Abbey monopolised its quarries at Doulting after 1184, forcing the Wells masons to use Chilcote stone instead. Explanations are offered for the vast array of sculpture on the west front. Highly consistent in style and quality, the figures were evidently the work of a single workshop, and generally painted, principally in white and gold in red niches, yet often patched up.

Both text and photographs are highly sensitive to colour. Expert reports on the glass, paintings and dendrochronology are quoted. There are very few errors. One cannot fail to learn from the wealth of detail and new discoveries. Perhaps there needed to be more on where Wells Cathedral is significant – the pioneering Early English architecture, the wonderful syncopating nave triforium arches, or the pioneering pair of western Perpendicular towers. Anybody who knows the building will of course find omissions – where is the best north-west view from this reviewer's grandfather's house, and why is there not more on Bishop Burnell's palace and Bishop Stillington's remarkable Lady Chapel by the cloister, and its predecessor? But this is a comprehensive, well-structured and thoroughly readable survey with plenty of indications as to where to look next.