Chartres Cathedral avoided damage typical of European cathedrals largely because of its relatively remote location (80km SW of Paris). The Beauce region is agrarian, a plain once known as "the granary of France", and Chartres (the town) did not become a modern metropole, so Chartres (the cathedral) escaped the scale of damage typically suffered from looting, fighting between royalty, and ultimately WWII. (As so often, luck too was involved: A plan by the Revolutionary Committee during the French Revolution was stymied by locals, in particular an imaginative architect. In WWII, a U.S. Army Colonel helped rescind an order to destroy the cathedral, though this bit isn't in Ward's account.) And yet: Ward tells us most damage actually can be linked to "preservationists" who found the Middle Ages aesthetics "ugly" and so attempted to replace statuary and other architectural features with 18th and 19th Century improvements. Today, though, damage from air pollution is unabated.

Ward's Chartres provides a virtual tour, each chapter focusing on one aspect of the cathedral: Here we have the Royal Portal, now we walk down the nave, there the stained glass windows in their glory, here the South Transept ... -- largely an uninspiring account, for all the personal enthusiasm Ward clearly conveys. That said, there is a great deal of factual information here in an economical space, and the images (photographs, drawings, charts in the Folio Society edition) are invaluable.

If I was disappointed in the chapter on sacred geometry (elegant diagrams but a missed opportunity to invoke wonder), the chapter on "Interpreters" snuck up on me and became a favourite. Authors, not only novelists, who took the example of Chartres and infused their own texts with its magic and resonance. In particular I look forward to Huysmans. ( )