St George’s Chapel, Windsor, is what is known as a “Royal Peculiar”. That means that, while it lies within the borders of the diocese of Oxford, it is wholly exempt from the authority normally exercised by the Bishop of Oxford. St George’s may not be the most celebrated example of this particular ecclesiastical genre — that distinction probably belongs to Westminster Abbey — but it is in many ways the most revealing one.

No one doubts, for instance, that even today the Dean of Windsor is very much the hand picked choice of the Sovereign. That is understandable enough. Not only does the Dean normally serve as domestic chaplain to the monarch; he also lives cheek-by-jowl with her within the confines of the castle.

On regular Sunday mornings, for reasons of privacy, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh may prefer to attend the Royal Chapel of All Saints within Windsor Great Park but festivals and high days, such as Easter Sunday, will normally see her accompanied by her extended family beneath the vaulted roof of St George’s. It is there also, of course, that the Garter ceremony takes place, ensuring that once a year (regardless of whether any new Garter Knights need to be installed) a piece of medieval pageantry is put on public display. More than any other contemporary place of worship, St George’s Chapel, Windsor, can thus claim to whisper the last enchantments of the Age of Chivalry to the modem world.

It was, therefore, a shrewd idea of the veteran royal writer, Hugo Vickers, to mark the 660th anniversary of the founding of both the Order of the Garter and of the College of St George (as St George’s should technically be known) to bring out a combined historical and architectural volume. In fact, it turns out to be more historical than architectural, though it does include a full quotient of dazzling photographs taken by the author’s wife.

While modestly disclaiming any specialised knowledge, Vickers has known St George’s for many years, having first been introduced to it while still a pupil at a nearby prep school and going on to become one of its Sunday afternoon guides while an Eton schoolboy. He is particularly strong on its more recent past, providing thumbnail sketches of a variety of its more colourful personalities (including the odious Canon John Dalton who for nearly half a century contrived to make the lives of successive deans a complete misery). But then, like too many collegiate foundations, St George’s has never been a stranger to internal strife. It is to the author’s credit that he does not seek to pretend otherwise.

Although one Victorian dean, Randall Davidson, went on to be Archbishop of Canterbury, the modern practice has been for the job to be offered to clerics on the basis of services already rendered (in recent times they have tended to be either suffragan of even diocesan bishops). The thinking here, as Vickers hints, seems to have been based on a hope that they at least would possess the authority to keep the chapter in order. Not that the job has to be a bed of nails. One of the author’s best stories concerns the corrupting effect that so close a proximity to the royal presence can have on even the best-intentioned clergy. One recent holder of the Windsor Deanery is even alleged to have remarked: “There is too much name-dropping going on in the castle, and the Queen and I don’t like it.”

— St George’s Chapel: Windsor Castle by Hugo Vickers, Photographs by Elizabeth Vickers (The College of St George, £19.99)