Members' Exclusive Lecture with Diarmaid MacCulloch

Hidden in plain sight: understanding English chancel screens after the Reformation, with Diarmaid MacCulloch.

This lecture is an examination and interpretation of chancel screens in post-Reformation English parish churches - not rood screens, although many of them will have been rood screens before the Reformation. It tells and may explain the story of the uniquely English survival and flourishing of chancel screens despite England's break with Rome. By looking at church buildings alongside the actual history of the Church of England, Reverend Professor MacCulloch makes a surprising connection that helps us understand both buildings and history a little better.

Diarmaid is Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, and Fellow of St Cross College and of Campion Hall. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessell-Tiltman Prizes. He was knighted in 2012 and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2022. Diarmaid also launched CCT's award-winning platform, CCTdigital, with a five-part series titled Churchcrawls in Solitude in 2021.
 

Cover image: top left church depicted is Vowchurch in Herefordshire, right handside church depicted is All Saints' Church in Tilney, Norfolk.