Writings

clients-2

AA Files
Aeon
Apollo Magazine
Architecture Today
Architects’ Journal
Architectural Review
Art Quarterly
Blueprint
Building Design
Burlington Magazine
Design for London
Financial Times
Frieze
Guardian
Huffington Post
Icon Magazine
London Review of Books
Literary Review
Observer
Prospect
RA Magazine
Times Literary Supplement

Women in Architecture

Over the years I have written about many forgotten women in twentieth century architecture. Two of the most rewarding were Elisabeth Scott, who won the competition to design the Stratford Memorial Theatre before she had a vote, and Minnette de Silva who I met briefly in the late 1980s but whose work in Sri Lanka I only saw for myself last year. See Guardian article or Apollo Magazine article

Guardian Saturday Review

Angus Wilson was almost the only writer to set a novel in a postwar New Town, where modern ideals met contemporary architecture and planning, not always happily. It’s also a subtle portrait of an elderly woman able and willing to change her expectations, unlike the rest of her posturing family. See Guardian Saturday Review

Herald on Sunday

When Vesuvius came out I received letters from men who, served in the Allied forces in southern Italy, and had witnessed the 1944 eruption. Here’s my conversation with one of those correspondents Sir Frederick O’Brien QC. See Herald on Sunday

London Review of Books

Robert Hughes’s death in 2012 prompted this memory, set against halcyon yet sad days in Florence.

A bit of a mystery story, but overwhelmingly about its setting. I like this one!

Whilst writing my biography of John Evelyn, I visited Wotton, his birthplace, now a smart conference centre.  Yet the landscape, beech woods and gardens are much as they always were. This diary piece celebrates them.

Essex is a county I know well and value. Reviewing a Buildings of England volume allowed me to indulge myself, writing about such an under-appreciated county. Now it has given birth to a book.

Building Design

In June 2012, my eye was caught by this massive structure, rising on the edge of Green Park. I was concerned how it had ever been allowed to bite into a corner of a Royal Park. The piece, one of my monthly columns, provoked a gratifying response, both online and in print.