Building in Victorian Mayfair, but on an inauspicious site between some stables and a workhouse, the Jesuit fathers were anxious that the architecture and decoration of their London church should match its spiritual significance. Their architects created an interior of exceptional beauty and opulence, befitting the church's Marian dedication, and Farm Street grew to become a powerhouse of British Catholicism, witnessing influential sermons by leading thinkers and the conversion to Rome of such prominent figures as Evelyn Waugh, Edith Sitwell and Lord Longford. The authors of this book, the first large-scale study of Farm Street, set out the Jesuits' achievement there. Sheridan Gilley charts the intricate negotiations that led them to build when and where they did, and those who helped and hindered them. Michael Hall's definitive architectural history of the building examines the work of its talented architects, sculptors and designers, and Andrew Twort's especially commissioned photographs record it in all its splendour. Maria Perry continues the story, through the privations of the war years of the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first.This sumptuous book tells the remarkable story of one of London's great Catholic institutions.
