2008-03-17 OK - so far as it goes.

The newspaper reviewers have hailed this book as a marvel, but I can't help but think they were reading a different book.
Hicks provides a basic account of how stained glass is made, and then a reign-by-reign history of the stops and starts in the making of this superlative series of windows, with interesting mini-biographies of some of the major glass-painters. She does provide a sense of the milieu in which the glass was made, and of the politics behind their making - even if this is at times sketchy.
What the book lacks, though, is much account of the glass itself. Apart from the odd vignette you will get no sense of the story the windows are telling or the fascinating parallels between the Old and New Testament scenes that occur in pairs throughout. There isn't even so much as a list of the scenes' titles.
If you want to learn about the glass at King's, read something else (Hilary Wayment's history if you can find and afford it). If you are already familiar with the glass then this will tell you new things about their history. But as an introduction to the windows then, in the end, it fails to satisfy.