Nine-hundred-year-old St Michael's Church in the beautiful Sussex village of Amberley adjoins the world-famous castle, now a hotel. The nave is Norman; the chancel, south aisle and west tower are Early English. Artists, as is to be expected, have long settled in Amberley. This accounts for the church's richness in decorative features that date from the first third of the twentieth century. These vie with the medieval ones, of which the murals are the most celebrated. St Michael's is open all day, every day.The author of this important study, perhaps the longest and many would say the best about any English parish church, lives with his wife in one of Amberley's thatched cottages. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, under Nevill Coghill. The Laurence Binyon Prize enabled him to study works of art and architecture in Italy. He was an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Musuem, Oxford, and taught English literature at Long Island University, U.S.A., before devoting himself fully to writing. Nigel Foxell’s Ten Poems Analysed was followed by five novels. He edited a portion of Lady Fremantle's diaries under the title Journey in the Two Sicilies. Much of his journalism has been in Italian, and 2003 saw the publication of his La Sardegna senza Lawrence (Aipsa Edizioni), of which an English version – Sardinia Without Lawrence – is to be published by Hearing Eye. Long out of print, his A Sermon in Stone: John Donne's Monument in St Paul's Cathedral was published in 1978 by Menard Press, which intends to publish a second edition in 2006 or 2007.
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