This is a massive tome, and a very heavy one too, requiring to be read on a hefty table or (as with this reviewer, on a robustly constructed lectern). It deals with an enormous range of buildings associated with places of worship, including synagogues, meeting-houses for Dissenters, churches for Anglicans and Roman Catholics and chapels (including exemplars in town- and country-houses, colleges and hospitals), and (a topic somewhat neglected in many studies) the considerable number of repairs, additions and alterations to medieval cathedrals, including the underestimated works carried out at Lincoln Cathedral under James Essex (1722–84).

Given the coverage, the choice of title for this book is misleading: a volume's name should more accurately reflect its contents. Some mausolea and parsonages are included, though only some, and one might wonder why Soane's Saxlingham Rectory, Norfolk (1784–7), was omitted. Friedman explores not just the fabric of the buildings, but the phenomena of attendance and religious observance from cradle to grave, the accommodation of congregations, how the clergy lived, and how finances were organized. He is even concerned with musical events. His book describes the use of colour, pictorial stained-glass windows and furnishings, among a great deal more. All in all, it is a work full of riches and fascinating material, but it is not the easiest tome to use.

Perhaps the most interesting parts of Friedman's work concern the many reasons for rebuilding and the maintenance of the fabric of ancient structures. In particular, he deals with the contentious issues of how the so-called ‘Gothic’ style was employed in eighteenth-century design, even when it was mixed with Classicism in the same building, and he also has a foray into the neglected field of Romanesque Revival. He is excellent on the impact of contemporary architects on the maintenance of ancient ecclesiastical buildings, and the controversies prompted by the draconian works of James Wyatt at Salisbury, Durham and elsewhere, which caused John Carter (elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1795) to denounce such cavalier and destructive approaches to ancient works. Friedman's exposition of various aspects of Classical architecture, influenced by the Antique and the baroque, and informed by the works of Andrea Palladio, Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, James Gibbs, Robert Adam, William Chambers, George Dance, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and others, is comprehensive and masterly, and he devotes some pages to the exquisite chapel at Greenwich Hospital designed by James Stuart and William Newton.

Many are the illustrations: the historical images are splendid, charming, delightful and informative, consisting of engravings, lithographs, watercolours, drawings and so on, and the coverage is breathtaking, with many beautiful examples (the Sardinian Embassy Chapel at Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Bevis Marks and Great Synagogues, also in London, are cases in point), chosen with great acumen from a wide variety of sources. However, a far more professional approach to modern photographs should have been adopted: too many of the photographs are badly distorted vertically, and should have been rejected and replaced by images taken with better cameras, used by persons who actually know something of the ropes regarding architectural photography. Some of the distorted pictures are little more than rather awful snapshots (pl 311 is one terrible example, and 536 is another stinker), wholly unworthy of the subject.

Notes (or references) are exhaustive, even massive (one suspects, on reading them, that they could have been boiled down a bit with benefit, for some are tediously long), but the bibliography lacks both places of publication and publishers: this should not have got through the editorial process, which seems to have been lax in other directions too, as there is rather a lot of repetition that ought to have been picked up, and some names are wrong (‘Litton’ for ‘Litten’ is just one example). As bibliographies go, this one is very profligate in terms of the space used, and many pages (and some weight) could have been saved with tighter layouts (even with places of publication and publishers added). In addition, fully documented, chronologically sequenced design and construction histories of 272 important ecclesiastical buildings are included on the cd-rom which accompanies this very big book, a useful and significant extra to what is a considerable achievement.

But as for the index, it is infuriating: for example, under ‘Essex, James’ we simply have lists of page numbers, with no attempt at subheadings which would help the user regarding location, subject-matter and so on. Instead, the unfortunate reader has to wade through every number in order to turn to the appropriate page so that what is on it may be established, thus the process is both hit and miss and time-wasting. For such a mighty book the index is really very inadequate, and the publishers (and author) should have been more than aware that a skimped index is almost as annoying as a bad one (or none at all).

It is a pity that such massive labour expended on such a huge, all-embracing and informative book (containing many delights) has not been accorded better professional modern photographs, more attention to careful editing (excising repetition and checking names), a less skimped bibliography and a far more usable index. It would also have helped if Friedman's prose had been less desiccated, to the point, on occasion, of aridity: the subject needs a bit of spice and grace at times to make it more digestible. Nevertheless, this reviewer has no illusions about the huge amount of effort, scholarship, research and knowledge that has gone into the making of this enormous book.