As can be judged from the photos below, it is an impressive feat. But is it successful?

There are features (particularly the incredible level of ornate detailing) which ask us to believe that this is the Medieval style in our own day. But to my mind, there is one crucial difference.

Notice how dark this room is for a Chapel.

See how high the windows are and how the light only reaches halfway down the wall.

Notice how narrow the Chapel actually is.

The Medieval Cathedral was a vast open space. This required pillars which symbolised trees, turning the inside of the sanctuary into a symbolised garden, with the vaulted ceiling showing the branches. The Thistle Chapel has an impression of vaulting but with pillars against the wall.

Of course the Thistle Chapel has not the scale of a Cathedral. So a more suitable comparison would be with a Chapel such as the Royal Chapel in Conwy:

This Chapel is a fraction of the size of the Thistle Chapel. But see how the light fills the space. Now look again at the Thistle Chapel:

Medieval architects knew that a Chapel should be a place of light. The stone was chosen to reflect light. Large windows faced east to greet the rising sun. There was meaning in this design and also tremendous practicality. The image above shows a no-man's land of design. In a time when we have abundant electricity to illuminate the darkest room, the small candle-type lights give an impression of illumination but leave the Chapel dark. The windows are too high to flood the room with light. It is a small, gloomy place.

It is possible to build today in a similar way to the best Medieval architects but only if we think in a similar way. Emulation always descends into pastiche, just as much as if a modern artist should paint a Caravaggio or a composer should write like Purcell.

The Thistle Chapel's designer Robert Lorimer seems to have pressed the idea of Medieval ornamentation to breaking point at the expense of logical design. This does not make the Chapel exceptionally beautiful. I actually find it somewhat gross. Of course it still stands out because most buildings of the last hundred years underplayed beauty on the basis that such plainness would maximise practicality.

It is not the Medieval style of architecture we need to imitate so much as a way of seeing the world, art and beauty. In the Middle Ages we see the marriage of beauty and form to a remarkable degree. For instance, if this Thistle Chapel had been built for regular use to worship God (as every Medieval Chapel was), it would have been built very differently. The nationalistic touches of Scottish history, so lovely for tourists, would have been left outside by the Medieval architect. The beauty of the place would have come from its function as a place of worship, just as the worship would have made the place beautiful.

The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey

Author: Leanda de Lisle

Abigail is currently reading this title. Where she is at the moment: Queen Jane has been executed. Katherine's heart has broken in a way that makes Shakespeare's Juliet look like a spoilt child and she has faded to Heaven. Now Mary is parted from her beloved. A gripping, dense narrative, which leaves an undoubted impression that Queen Elizabeth inherited the worst Tudor traits. Highly recommended.

It is unfashionable today (to say the least) to stand on the shoulders of anyone else. In the absence of absolutes or anything akin to "truth", modern historians wish the world to be reduced to primary sources. We can believe no one, rely on no one. This means that everyone is an island, starting their study of history from scratch.

The result is obvious - few get passed the preliminaries of research and essay writing to present history in a less evidence-dense "objective" form. The consequence (or perhaps the purpose) is that history has been redefined. It is no longer the record of the past, but a means of affirming that nihilistic shade of modern philosophy: we do not know and we do not do.

So to read and to use the works of Monsieur Viollet-le-Duc has left us open to criticism. It is deemed a horrific short-cut, as though we care for nothing but sales (which is funny to us, because our lengthy production times are hardly commercially strident). I can still hear the dismissive note at a history conference when one of the delegates discovered that we use the research of Sidney Toy. We might as well have said that we programme ourselves to dream what the castles were like and wake up with the answer!

We are not historically naive - just realistic. We believe in truth. At the same time, we know our limits and are content to head in the direction of historical truth than to stand still in a posture of objectivity.

Sketch from Dictionary of French architecture from the 11th–16th century (1856) by Viollet-le-Duc, courtesy of http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/File:Arcature.eglise.Souvigny.png