On 29 December 1940, Herbert Mason was on fire watch atop the Daily Mail building in Carmelite Street, just off London’s Fleet Street. Looking eastward during the worst raid of the Blitz, he saw St Paul’s shrouded in smoke and dust; waiting patiently, just minutes later the smoke cleared sufficiently for him to take the picture that became iconic in the battle to buoy up the spirits of Londoners. It captured that sense of Britain fighting alone for the soul of Europe. St Paul’s continues to have a symbolic significance throughout Britain, but interestingly that is not new. Margaret Willes’ excellent account of the history and importance of St Paul’s churchyard adds remarkably to our understanding of that small enclave in the heart of the City of London and its role in the production, publishing and selling of books and thus in the realm of communications down the centuries. She describes the churchyard as the Times newspaper of the Middle Ages!

Beginning with an engagingly compact history of the City and churchyard, we learn of the origins of London itself. The meeting of the ‘folk moot’ here sets the scene, as does the continuing reference to St Paul’s Cross effectively an open air pulpit just to the north east of the cathedral. Here Simon de Montfort’s rallying of his troops spelt the end for the folk moot but established the place of St Paul’s Cross as ‘the prime site to reinforce the political and religious establishment, and at times to become a threat of opposition’ (p. 24). John Wycliffe too, often known as the ‘morning star of the Reformation’, was the focus of disturbances outside the cathedral in the later fourteenth century. Civic ceremonies also, often revolving around the Lord Mayor, took place here. St Paul’s Cross became a powerful instrument of communication.

This focus on communication was to grow with the advent of printing. Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1500, moved his printing business from Westminster Abbey to St Paul’s. By 1515, publishing also began to be established in the churchyard, with John Rastell setting up shop there. It became the centre for the printing and publishing of the Bible, but soon a greater variety of books would also find their way there and, notably, from the mainland continent. Willes handles the Reformation with considerable skill telling us just enough, without being caught up in the complexities of recent revisionist histories of the period. So, Mary Tudor made good use of the churchyard in her short-lived ‘Counter-Reformation’. Willes’ paragraph (p. 77) on Elizabeth’s subtle take on both the Reformation and the role of the Church of England is a model of clarity. Her comparison between these two monarchs is interesting, with the Papist Mary keen on hearing the word preached, but the more self-contained Elizabeth being no enthusiastic ‘sermon-goer’. Throughout the staggering back and forth of the English Reformation(s), St Paul’s Cross remained crucial for both protagonists and antagonists.

Next we move on to the children of St Paul’s, who reappear more than once in the book in different guises. St Paul’s School features, as do various plays and pageants acted out by the boys. This was infectious, and with a galleried inn in Ludgate Hill and a playhouse close to Blackfriars, the churchyard gave birth to drama. All this is the backdrop to what is described as the ‘twilight of Old St Paul’s’, which is a sad tale of moral decline, and neglect of the building, with the cathedral itself becoming a centre for business, effectively ‘defiling the temple’ to borrow a biblical phrase. Nonetheless, pageants continued as did the churchyard as a focus of communication and news-gathering.

All this prepares the reader for the Great Fire and its impact on City and cathedral alike. This is handled with panache – and there is a sense of excitement as she charts her course through the fire itself, the crumbling of the mediaeval gothic cathedral and the devastation of the City landscape. The rebuilding is painted for the reader with equal vigour, including all the intrigues along the way. The clearing of the churchyard and demolition of the ruins of the old church are followed by insights into the master architect and scientist, Christopher Wren, and his equally impressive associate, Robert Hooke. We read of the vast numbers employed in the building of Wren’s baroque masterpiece, of the screens erected around the burgeoning edifice, of women plumbers and of the workers ‘clocking in’ with the help of an hourglass. Despite the vast loss of books in the fire, the publishing and book selling was swiftly re-established with the Stationers’ Company playing a key role with its monopoly on the licensing of publications. Abergavenny House, where the company had been based, to the north-west of the cathedral, was replaced with Stationers’ Hall, reopening as early as 1673.

Following the opening of the new cathedral, in 1710, by which time Wren had reached the age of 90, the churchyard once again became a crucial focus for national religious occasions, alongside its key role in the City of London. It is a tradition that has continued; indeed protest also returned to the churchyard in 2012 with the Occupy movement camping out by the west door and ultimately leading to the resignation of a canon residentiary, and then of the dean. The publishing trade and bookselling sprouted from the remains more strongly than ever. The publication of the King James Bible in 1611 and then of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662 had consolidated the churchyard’s role. The publisher Rivington became famous for religious books for those of a high church persuasion following the Oxford Movement; curiously, the evangelical Religious Tract Society based itself close by in the churchyard. Moving into the twentieth century and after the wartime devastation of Paternoster Row and surrounding streets, publishing moved elsewhere. Oxford University Press was the last to leave its churchyard premises in nearby Amen Corner.

This is a beautifully written and engaging account that will unearth for many the background to the growth of publishing and printing. Alongside that, it identifies the way in which religion, culture and the state have related to each other in the growth of a contemporary democracy and, through that, the role of a particular model of a folk church.