Since medieval times, great figures in British history have been buried in Westminster Abbey with fine monuments built to their memory. These include Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, Gladstone, Disraeli and Canning, poets and musicians such as Shakespeare, Milton, Handel and Purcell, and a great many distinguished generals and admirals. This guide to the Abbey starts at the main entrance and conducts the reader around the Abbey in a clockwise direction. Examples of medieval, Tudor and Victorian work are included, but the book concentrates on the 17th and 18th centuries when monumental sculpture reached its apogee with artists such as Rysbrack, Roubiliac, Nollekens and Flaxman.