The problem with writing about Catholic churches is that their main stock of marvellous historic buildings were all forcibly commandeered by the Church of England more than 400 years ago.

For the next two centuries, even planning to build a Catholic church was fraught with danger, and when one was built, furious mobs were likely to sack them.

But when Catholics did come out from the priest holes, they proved that they can build just as beautifully as the Church of England and all the other Protestant denominations.

Take the church of the Benedictines' Ampleforth Abbey that seems to have been sitting serenely in the Hambleton Hills since the early Middle Ages instead of 1925.

Or how about the stunning tower of St Edward the Confessor in Clifford near Boston Spa, which dominates the landscape so much it is easy to overlook the newer and more discrete Anglican St Luke in the same village.

As A Glimpse Of Heaven shows, there are scores of Catholic churches well worth a visit for purely aesthetical reasons. Often the interiors, which had to be fitting venues for Catholic ceremony, are far more ornate than the exteriors.

But not always - St Joseph's in Pickering is sparse and simple inside, though the carvings on its font are worth a long look.

Christopher Martin charts the gradual flowering of Catholic church architecture from the Reformation through to the present day with plenty of details about the men and women behind the building.