Dr Jonathan Foyle is a world-renowned architectural historian who, amongst his other accomplishments, has authored seven volumes on great cathedrals and castles.   In this 3-lecture study day, he draws on a 30-year career in the historic environment to offer in-depth and fresh analyses of architecture and the arts, especially their all-important symbolism, through which we can better understand what their makers are trying to communicate.

How to 'Read' Great Churches

Britain is peppered with medieval churches, great and small: they are some of our most familiar buildings. But when we stop and look at them carefully, we can begin to decipher messages and meanings in form, detail and even situation. This talk combines much original work gained in writing six volumes on English churches. It presents an essential guide on how to think about these enigmatic and deeply narrative places, so that their makers can better communicate with us across the centuries.

A Paradise Garden: The Hidden Meanings of Medieval Flowers

Our churches and cathedrals are packed with symbols that make much better sense if you understand the meanings and associations behind them. The speaker presents a guide to how to see through medieval eyes, using manuscripts and paintings to emphasise the worldview that saw order and meaning expressed through the colours, numbers, shapes and behaviour of plants and animals. Once you see the logic of the language, there's no going back!

The Nature of the Beast: Understanding Fabulous Animals in Medieval Art

Medieval bestiaries are wondrously colourful worlds, blending fact with fiction, morality with mythology. They represent an understanding of the physical world, but also fulfilled the need for symbolic creatures to supplement biblical stories, offering a wide array of noble or crude behaviours with which to compare ourselves. What happened if you chased a bonnacon? What was a beaver's superpower? What did owls mean? And how did animals graduate from bestiaries into the realm of heraldry? In the course of an hour, we'll explore all these and more.