A new edition of Nikolaus Pevsner's The Leaves of Southwell

The excellent Five Leaves Books of Nottingham - you'll find their shop in an alley near the Council House - have brought out a new edition of Nikolaus Pevsner's The Leaves of Southwell.

Gillian Darley, who contributed an introduction, writes in the London Review of Books:

Pevsner, whose name is inescapably attached to the Buildings of England, seems to have begun work on this little volume very soon after he was released from internment and had begun to pick up the pieces of academic life in Britain. Although published in 1945, it was probably written in 1942.

The text is a celebration of the naturalistic carvings of Southwell Minster, the work of itinerant craftsmen, whose subtle stylistic differences Pevsner happily puzzles over: ‘The individual craftsman,’ he writes, ‘must have had a considerable amount of personal liberty.’

Read the whole piece to learn how David Attenborough was involved with the original 1945 edition.