Victorian Stained Glass, Trevor Yorke, Shire Publications, 20222, 64p, £8-99. ISBN 978-1-78442-483-1

This is an extraordinarily helpful introduction to the art and manufacture of stained glass. Its extra attraction is that it offers much more than the title suggests.

Trevor Yorke provides a very succinct but clear explanation of the history of stained-glass provision from medieval times, helping me to understand the stages through which it has developed and the science behind how the glass has been prepared at various stages. This then enables us to appreciate exactly what was provided to English churches as the nineteenth century progressed.

At the core of this book, we are introduced to the skills of the greatest Victorian stained-glass artists, such as Augustus Welby Pugin, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Charles Eamer Kempe. Very strong illustrations enable us fully to appreciate what they created and the designs that they adopted. Being guided to explore, for example, for the wheatsheaf symbol, the hallmark of the work of Kempe, is part of how we are being prepared to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of their art.

Because he continues his survey into the first half of the twentieth century, he also equips us to appreciate the stained-glass provision of more recent times, with the emergence of women artists such as Mary Lowndes and Mabel Esplin.

From a personal perspective, he discusses how stained glass began to be provided in public settings, beyond the confines of church buildings, but also how it became, however standardised, a feature in many private houses built between the two world wars. This gave context to my own experience growing up in a terraced house, built in that era, which had a stained-glass panel in its front door.

This book concludes with a very carefully selected gazetteer of thirty-six possible locations where is will be possible to see the very best examples of this type of artist work from the Victorian era and more recently.