The Unknown Cathedral
Ed. Steve Callaghan and Bryce Wilson

An American tourist was showing his young son around an Oxford College, when the boy saw a face at a study window and said, 'Gee Dad, are these ruins inhabited?'

Old buildings tend to be victims of the idea that they were always like that, pickled in some conservationist aspic.

St Magnus Cathedral is a living witness to change; religious, cultural and social, and is all the richer for its growth over more than eight centuries, and this short and eminently readable book fleshes out the human faces which have helped to shape this magnificent building which is so integral to the life and history of Orkney.

The farmers of these islands, granted freehold of their lands in exchange for their donations by the far-sighted Earl Rognvald, ensured that the Cathedral would be a permanent memorial to his martyred uncle Magnus, and so enabled subsequent Orcadians to have a sense, not only of possession, but of belonging within its walls.

The book, a series of five, well-researched and informative essays, with copious illustrations, is mutually complementary to the current exhibition of the same title currently on show at the Orkney Museum until September 20, and a 'must' for any self-respecting Orcadian who values the built inheritance in their midst. Architectural historians write lyrically of the strength and proportions of the building and the quality of light in Orkney which seems to imbue it with an almost eastern splendour, but it is often, as now, that the detail of some carving or the human problem of coping with several hundred exuberant excursionists from Thurso in the early 1930s and the high quality of the choral and other performances during the St Magnus Festival demonstrates that these are indeed living stones.

The French architect Le Corbusier wrote a book entitled 'When cathedrals were white', although in fact, they were invariably a riot of colour. What St Magnus Cathedral was like in its own early coat of many colours, we will never know, but the Cathedral committee of council and kirk members and the efforts of the Friends of St Magnus Cathedral, currently manifested in the splendid new St Magnus Centre, together with the warmth and vision of its incumbent, Ron Ferguson, ensure a confident and colourful future for this great building, now so well brought to life by this book and the accompanying exhibition.

Kenneth Nugent