John Soane An Accidental Romantic

john-soane
Yale University Press  1999
paperback ISBN 0 300 08165 0
A biography, rather than an architectural monograph, recounting the meteoric rise of a bricklayer’s son to become architect of the Bank of England at the age of 35. If his house/museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields could be counted as his autobiography, as I argued, he still deserved a biography.
Short-listed for the James Tait Black prize for biography.
 
‘one of the finest biographies of any British architect’
TLS
…a perceptive portrait of Soane’s complex personality and his roller-coaster career’
The Sunday Telegraph
‘Darley is a sensitive explorer ….she makes shrewd and intelligent links between the often troubled life and those masterly and haunting buildings
Literary Review