Description

Pugin was one of Britain’s greatest architects and his short career one of the most dramatic in architectural history. Born in 1812, at 15 Pugin was working for King George IV at Windsor Castle. Aged 21 he had been shipwrecked, bankrupted and widowed, and 19 years later he died, insane and disillusioned, but having changed the face and the mind of British architecture. 

Pugin’s career was mercurial. Before he was 30, he had designed 22 churches, three cathedrals, half a dozen extraordinary houses, and a Cistercian monastery. For eight tumultuous years he worked with Charles Barry on the Palace of Westminster creating its sumptuous interiors, in particular the House of Lords and ‘Big Ben’ the clock tower that became one of Britain’s most famous landmarks. With his obsessive attention to detail, he was the first architect-designer to cater for the middle-classes, producing everything from plant pots to wallpaper and early flat-pack furniture. 

This book is the first full modern biography of an extraordinary figure. It draws on thousands of unpublished letters and drawings to recreate his life and work as architect, propagandist and romantic artist as well as the turbulent story of his three marriages, the bitterness of his last years and his sudden death at 40.

‘A biography that is as robust and energetic as its curious subject’. The Guardian
‘A magnificent biography, as sumptuous and intricate as anything Pugin built' John Carey

• Author: Rosemary Hill
• Paperback, 656 pages
• ISBN: 9780140280999