Why isn’t Elon Musk celebrating Notre Dame more?

The world’s richest man is weighing in on several real or imagined issues to do with western civilisation and culture. But other than attending Notre Dame’s reopening in Paris with Donald Trump last month and sharing a video of the mediaeval cathedral, he hasn’t said very much more about something that might justifiably be called ‘one of the great wonders of Christendom’. Some say a successful restoration may not be controversial enough! Excerpts from This Week, Those Books. Sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/ and get the post and podcast the day it drops

Rashmee Roshan Lall
4 min readJan 13, 2025
Notre Dame restored. Image tweeted by France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Nov 29

Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story.

Rejoice, we are a community of more than 10,000 subscribers in 120 countries.

Please consider supporting this news literacy effort so that we can keep it freely accessible. And if you can’t pay just email thisweekthosebooks@substack.com and we’ll give you full access, including to the archives, no questions asked.

🎧 Would you rather listen? We have a human (not AI) read-along.

Rashmee

Subscribe

The Big Story:

Notre Dame, the soaring landmark cathedral in Paris, reopened with grand ceremony after more than five years of internationally-supported reconstruction work following a devastating fire…

Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmann’s newly published book offers a lavishly illustrated official history of Notre Dame’s reconstruction from that first moment in April 2019 when he visited the deeply damaged mediaeval church:

Through a gaping hole above, caused by the collapse of the 315-foot-tall (96 meter) spire, you can see a section of the sky and some scaffolding. One image strikes me: that of the chairs left in place, which lets you imagine the worshipers who were here shortly before the fire broke out. The scene is upsetting.

This Week, Those Books:

An Italian architect argues that successful restoration, like gardening, needs careful pruning and grafting.

A novel recreates that time when churches took a century to build.

Leave a comment

Subscribe

The Backstory:

France engaged in furious debate over the right way to rebuild Notre Dame’s roof and spire after they burned down. A public poll had 55% of respondents voting…

Hundreds of artisans, architects and other experts from around the world helped the reconstruction effort and 2,000 oak trees — some of them up to 400 years old — were sourced from forests around Europe…

This Week’s Books:

New Building in Old Cities: Writings by Gustavo Giovannoni on Architectural and Urban Conservation

By: Gustavo Giovannoni (and editors Steven W Semes, Francesco Siravo, Jeff Cody)

Publisher: Getty Conservation Institute

Year: 2024

Italian architect and historian Gustavo Giovannoni’s philosophy of preservation– “bargaining (transazioni) between new and old” — has not been available to read in English, until now, possibly because of misunderstood ideas about his links with Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

But editor-translator Steven W Semes has plugged the gap and there is reason to celebrate.

First, because Giovannoni’s ideas on urban conservation are enshrined in today’s international agreements. Second, because his theories on urbanism, environmentalism, resilience, sustainability and the revival of traditional building crafts are entirely in tune with our times…His view of conservation employed botanical metaphors. So, the city became “an orchard [requiring] the rational and prudent work of pruning and grafting”…Had he been alive today, Giovannoni would probably have tweeted approval of the Notre Dame restoration.”

Cathedral: A Novel

By: Ben Hopkins

Publisher: Europa Editions

Year: 2021

This book has many firsts. It is a filmmaker’s first novel. It’s unusually thick — more than 600 pages. It has a large cast of characters — 15. It is historical fiction and addresses a niche subject — the building of a cathedral loosely modelled on Notre Dame in the concocted German city of Hagenburg during the 13th and 14th centuries. Interestingly, the ongoing construction of Notre Dame, Our Lady of Paris, is even mentioned by one of the characters…

Choice quote:

“‘They are still building the Our Lady in Paris’. ‘And when did they begin?’ ‘I don’t know. Sixty years ago’.”…

I hope you find This Week, Those Books useful, thoughtful, and…a conversation starter. It’s a small operation here at TWTB, and support from readers like you helps keep this news literacy project going.

Subscribe

Email thisweekthosebooks@substack.com to tell us what you think.

Connect with me on LinkedIn | Twitter | Bluesky | Facebook | Threads | YouTube

Originally published at This Week, Those Books

--

--

Rashmee Roshan Lall
Rashmee Roshan Lall

Written by Rashmee Roshan Lall

PhD. Journalism by trade & inclination. Writer. My novel 'Pomegranate Peace' is about my year in Afghanistan. I teach journalism at university in London

No responses yet