Jon Cannon

Jon Cannon (1962 - 2023), architectural historian, lecturer and author, worked for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monument of England and English Heritage. Jon is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Cathedral: The Great English Cathedrals and the World that Made Them (Constable, 2007), The Secret Language of Sacred Places (Duncan Bird Publishing 2013), and Medieval Church Architecture (Shire Publications 2014). Jon presented the TV documentary How to Build a Cathedral on BBC4 (2008). Unfortunately Jon passed in the process of making this book, but his passion for landscape, history and culture lives on and leaps defiantly off the page - culminating in a richly researched and hugely special offering. For more than a decade, Jon was 'Keeper of the Fabric', then 'Canon Historian' at Bristol Cathedral, and his memorial, carved into the fabric of the Cathedral's Berkeley Chapel, recognises his contribution to the building, and his wider contribution to the understanding and appreciation of religious buildings. Jon wrote: 'I have a vocation, and it's to do with places; with communicating, enthusing, analysing - in short, extollagising - about the nature of 'old places', and what makes them tick.'