Small effigies of Charles and Agnes kneel in prayer on a black-and-white chequered floor beneath a canopy. Its subject is one of this country’s greatest but least appreciated and most widely dispersed treasures: the fine monumental sculptures that have survived in our parish churches, often in remote and out-of-the-way locations where none but the dedicated church crawler is likely to come across them.

These artworks - medieval brasses and elegant marble effigies, stone tomb chests and grand mausoleums - are of great. This one anatomises the British picnic, with pictures of people eating white bread sandwiches in fields and car parks from 1900 onwards.Dimitrijevic and Nachoum, wildlife photographers with 70 years’ experience between them, have pooled their portfolios and produced a book of rare wonder. Vibrant paintings were originally common across walls and screens in churches but were largely destroyed and whitewashed in the Reformation.

Newham has picked out 365 of the best monuments he has found - a feast of the celebrated and the obscure and an enthralling map of our aesthetic and social history -- Lucy Lethbridge * The Oldie * What fortunate isles are these, to boast thousands of local sculpture galleries scattered through towns and villages, nearly all accessible for free: churches that host funeral monuments and memorials spanning more than a millennium. Church monuments may at first appear niche, but the subject matter deserves an audience beyond church crawlers or taphophiles. LEFT - THE HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, BLYTHBOROUGH, SUFFOLK: ‘Thefts of money from churches were probably as common in the Middle Ages, as today,’ reveals Matthew.Francis also established a trust for the yearly placing of a poor child of the parish as an apprentice to a trade. Many of these works commemorate famous historical figures, from scheming Tudor courtier Richard Rich to Victorian prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. Several darker colours are seen moving towards a central sun with the message “per aspera ad astra” meaning "through hardships to the stars". Subtitled A Photographic Album Of The World’s Largest Animals, this enormous volume rather does what it says on the tin.

They may be relatively plain but were usually carved all over with complex abstract patterns, interlocking forms of ribbons, knots and spirals, together with stylised flora and fauna motifs. ST MAWGAN CHURCH, MAWGAN-IN-PYDAR, CORNWALL: ‘The late 10th-century “wheelhead” cross is the most beautiful of the many decorated crosses in the county,’ says Matthew. Matthew adds: ‘Sir Nathan was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, which he holds in his left hand. On top of a tomb chest lies the Duchess of Suffolk as in life, her heavy-jawed face possibly an attempt at portraiture — rare for such an early period.The oak effigy of Sir Robert du Bois at St Andrew, Fersfield, Norfolk, (below) retains most of its mid- fourteenth-century painted decoration. It begins with an introduction that includes a short history of the development of church monuments from medieval times to the modern era. You might manage to forget how beautiful Elvis was as a youth, until you open the pages of this book.

At the rear is an inscription panel flanked by two figures who most likely represent the Grylls’s steward, Henry Michell, and the rector of the church, Ezekiel Helliar. But more moving are the countless others—minor aristocrats, small-time industrialists, much-loved mothers, fathers, and children—who, if not for their memorials, would wholly be lost to time. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he is Director of The Digital Atlas of England, a complete photographic record of English’s parish churches. Newham says his principal aim is ‘to bring to a wider audience the monumental treasures to be found in churches and to encourage more people to visit and enjoy them’.As Newham blows the dust off these artworks and breathes life into the stories they tell, a new aesthetic history of rural England and Wales emerges. The 365 examples chosen for full-page illustration and commentary here are the clotted cream of the milk of human mortality.