Secrets of medieval churches

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. When you visit a medieval church, what oddities should you be looking out for? What's the difference between a gargoyle and a grotesque? And why in such holy places do you find rude and explicit statues? As a stonemason and conservator, Andrew Zaminsky has spent his working life restoring medieval churches, and he's the author of a new book, Church Going, which is all about the ins and outs of these medieval religious buildings.

Andrew spoke to David Musgrove. Today I am Delighted to be joined by Andrew Zaminsky, whose new book is Church Going. Now, Andrew is a bit different to the normal guest we have on the History Electra podcast. He's not a historian by trade.

He is a stonemason. Give us a little sense of you and your background and the sort of work that you do. Well, I'm a church stonemason and conservator and I've been doing this for getting on for 40 years now. And the reason I wrote my book, Church Going, is that I was always giving impromptu tours to people on our scaffolding and around our church conservation projects, just explaining to them what all the features and furnishings were within the church. And it seemed very clear to me that people didn't really understand what they were looking at.

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