A Thousand Years Of The English Parish, by Anthea Jones, (Windrush Press, £25)

THIS is a splendidly illustrated and richly detailed book about an institution firmly rooted in the English tradition.

Whatever our religious persuasion, we all live in a parish, we all have an idea of what a parish is, but few of us could say much more about it or explain the difference between a rector and a vicar or why the centre of the Church of England is at Canterbury.

This book unravels these secrets, the inner workings of the parish and its effect on society.

The 13,000 parishes in England, each with its parish church, cover the country in a network which gives strong identities to communities.

Anthea Jones, a former history teacher at Cheltenham Ladies College, highlights the changing status of the clergy through the centuries and discusses the future of the parish, that durable survivor from a bygone age which has done so much to shape English villages, towns and cities.