The Guardian Bookshop makes over 180,000 books available with up to 40% discount, as well as highlighting some of our favourite publications in each genre.
Find out more.
Well-reviewed biography of Pugin, one of Britain's greatest and most remarkable architects, whose life was both fascinating and tumultuous. By the time he was 21 he had been shipwrecked, bankrupted and widowed; he died 19 years later, disillusioned and insane, having changed the face and mind of British architecture. Selected as a 'Book of the Year' 8 times in the 2007 round-ups and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, it it sure to do well in paperback. 'A magnificent biography, as sumptuous and intricate as anything Pugin built' John Carey.
Synopsis
Pugin was one of Britain's greatest architects and his short career one of the dramatic in architectural history. This book draws on letters and drawings to recreate his life and work as architect, propagandist and romantic artist as well as the story of his three marriages, the bitterness of his last years and his sudden death at 40.
Book Details
Publisher:
PENGUIN GROUP
Publication Date:
07-Aug-2008
ISBN:
9780140280999
Guardian review
God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of the Romantic Britain
Victoria Segal the guardian Fri 15 August 2008
"Rough tongue-free unselfgoverned" was John Henry Newman's description of Augustus Pugin, the 19th-century architect, designer and - arguably - mastermind behind the clocktower that now houses Big Ben. Yet the future cardinal added that he "could not help" but like the unruly Pugin - an assessment hard to shake after reading a biography that is as robust and energetic as its curious subject. Rosemary Hill rolls out the dramatic panorama of Pugin's life and work, a vast tableau of wives and children, illnesses and feuds, theatrical lowlife and theological high-brows, as well as detailing the splendours and quirks of the buildings Pugin loved and created. This book leaves the reader reeling with the seasick pitch of constant motion, a forward thrust driven by Pugin's headful of ideas and the turbulent times in which he lived. He ultimately became insane - Hill posits that his last illness was syphilis, picked up in Covent Garden - and his legacy of brick and stone remains in contrast with the unsteady lurches of his life.