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The King's Glass: A Story of Tudor Power and Secret Art

By: Carola Hicks
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Chatto and Windus
ISBN: 0701179929
ISBN-13: 9780701179922
Released: 01 Nov 2007
RRP: £18.99
Average Rating:


Customer Reviews

OK - so far as it goes. - By: A. McGuire, 17 Mar 2008
The newspaper reviewers have hailed this book as a marvel, but I can't help but think they were reading a different book.
Hicks provides a basic account of how stained glass is made, & then a reign-by-reign history of the stops & starts in the making of this superlative series of windows, with interesting mini-biographies of some of the major glass-painters. She does provide a sense of the milieu in which the glass was made, & of the politics behind their making - even if this is at times sketchy.
What the book lacks, though, is much account of the glass itself. Apart from the odd vignette you will get no sense of the story the windows are telling or the fascinating paralllels between the Old & New Testament scenes that occur in pairs throughout. There isn't even so much as a list of the scenes' titles.
If you want to learn about the glass at King's, read something else (Hilary Wayment's history if you can find & afford it). If you are already familiar with the glass then this will tell you new things about their history. But as an introduction to the windows then, in the end, it fails to satisfy.