This collection of essays, occasioned by a conference on the Temple Church hosted by the Courtauld Institute in 2008, examines the establishment of the church; its medieval architecture, decoration, and monuments; and the rather sorry efforts to refurbish the church to its “original” state in succeeding centuries. The earlier essays deal with the founding (Helen Nicholson), design (Christopher Wilson and Virginia Jansen), and interior embellishments of the church (David Park and Philip Lankester). These essays will interest the architectural historian, the armorist, and students of church monuments. The essays by David Park and Philip J. Lankester especially require a specialist's knowledge of the subject matter.

Readers of Church History, on the other hand, will find the next three essays of particular interest since they weave together the changes made to the Temple within the historical cultural and religious context. Robin Griffin-Jones, one of the books two editors, focuses on the role of Christopher Wren in carrying out the wishes of the lawyers (the “Benchers”), who wanted to emphasize the Saxon origins of the church to complement their own theories about the source of English common law. Griffin-Jones argues that while Wren clearly recognized the Temple's connection to the Church of the Holy Sepulchere in Jerusalem, he attempted as well to satisfy the lawyers’ desires to classicize it. Rosemary Sweet details the efforts of eighteenth-century restorers to improve aspects of the church, which they recognized as a significant building despite its Gothic architecture. Later in the century when Gothic returned to vogue, reformers carried out a number of changes, especially removing the shops that surrounded much of the building so that its glories could be more generally appreciate. Unfortunately, as William Whyte argues in the next essay, the minions of the Gothic revival in the nineteenth-century refurbished the church to make it liturgically appropriate. Whyte suggests that some regarded the bombing of the church in 1941 as a blessing so that they could remove the Victorian excesses.

Regrettably, Griffin-Jones's closing article does not carry through the historical evolution of the previous three chapters. She misses an opportunity to explore in depth the reconstruction of the Temple church after the bombing and provide a understanding of why the current structure and its interior takes the form it does. On the other hand, the co-editors have provided an impressive range of prints both color and black and white to provide illustrations for the various articles.