Mixed tone amid bells

Press, 7 April 1979, Page 17

Mixed tone amid bells

Bells in England. By Tom Ingram. Muller. 204 pp. $12.75. (Reviewed by Peter Perry) There could be no more appropriate time for a review of a book on bells to appear in “The Press” than when, after several months of silence, the Cathedral bells and bellringers resume their sonorous activity. Christchurch claims to be a city of bells, appropriately enough when it takes its name from an institution even more famous in this respect, and is certainly well (if, in bellringers’ eyes, not yet well enough) endowed with a variety of bells and towers. Tom Ingram’s discursive and rambling account of the bells of England, first published 25 years ago, is, however, concerned not only with church bells, but with blue-bells and b e 11-bottoms, bell-moths, and Canterbury bells, to choose from a page at random. It is neither an authoritative campanological treatise, nor a comprehensive social anthropology of bells. In fact the author’s purpose is far from clear; a pot-pourri bred by enthusiasm out of abundant

information? An inexpensive bedside book for the guest room? a poor relation (and perhaps forebear) of the now commonplace and conspicuous coffee-table book? At times it is good entertainment.

Inaccuracies are numerous, inevitable in a reprint, and to a campanologist there is a curious lack of balance. The glorious diversity of towers and spires is discussed in eight pages, 23 are devoted to a tedious account of bell-foundry work; and the essentials of change ringing, a technical matter, but one which can be expressed quite briefly, do not really come across in a dozen pages devoted to the topic. Enthusiasm is no substitute for expertise and in matters campanological Tom Ingram belongs in the former category. The local inquirer had better begin with a visit to the Cathedral Tower, where visitors are always welcome, and to the public library in search of the classics listed by Ingram, but ineffectively imitated.

(Dr Peter Perry is secretary and treasurer of the Christchurch Cathedral Society of Bellringers.)