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God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain [Paperback]

Rosemary Hill
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
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Book Description

7 Aug 2008

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

God’s Architect is the first full modern biography of this 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 It draws on thousands of unpublished letters and drawings to recreate his life and work as architect, propagandist and romantic artist as well as the turbulent story of his three marriages, the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. It is the debut of a remarkable historian and biographer.


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Product details

  • Paperback: 624 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (7 Aug 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140280995
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140280999
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.8 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 27,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

a very remarkable book about a very remarkable man (A.N. Wilson)

A magnificent biography, as sumptuous and intricate as anything Pugin built (John Carey)

as the readable biography of a most protean and brilliant man, it is worthy of the best of his buildings (Colm Toibin)

An excellent and detailed biography (Peter Ackroyd)

About the Author

Rosemary Hill is a writer and historian and a trustee of the Victorian Society. She has published widely on 19th and 20th century cultural history and sits on the editorial board of the London Review of Books. From 2004-05 she was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Simply superb 16 Sep 2008
By PBL
Format:Paperback
One of the best biographies i have ever read. Beautifully written and fascinating even for someone like me who had little previous interest in either architecture or the nineteenth century.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A pre-eminent Victorian 21 May 2009
Format:Hardcover
Rosemary Hill's masterly life of Augustus Pugin is quite the best biography I have read for many years. Pugin was not high on my list of eminent Victorians. Thanks to her, he is now. An extraordinary creature, prodigious, amazingly precocious, wilful, cantankerous and quirky to an extreme; a figure that certainly belies the canard that men of his time were frock-coated and bewhiskered prigs.
Hill is most persuasive in her argument that Pugin was the seminal figures in the Gothic Revival and she brings to her task wide historical leaning and broad cultural interest, all presented with an easy elegance not always found in works so immaculate in scholarship and documentation. In the publishing bonanza of recent years, lucidity and precision so often is lost in the rush to get the latest volume into the current lists. Her book, in this, as in all other respects, is exceptional.
I have only one grouse, and a trifling one at that: the book needed more copious illustration. It is a comment upon the enthusiasm which Hill provokes that I longed to behold each rood screen, choir stall and chasuble she describes in something other than my mind's eye. Of course, such a book would be well beyond my and many another reader's pocket. We will have to be content with the finely chosen illustrations which economy has allowed us
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77 of 79 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars THE MAN WHO DESIGNED BIG BEN 26 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a superb biography. If you're interested in the history of English architecture and interior design then this book is unmissable. But Hill's vivid and rich portrait of a complex and driven man, whose ideas were highly influential but whose projects were often blighted, deserves to be read by a much wider readership. Witty, wise, often moving and always informative, GOD'S ARCHITECT is a great read.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank God for Pugin 15 Sep 2009
Format:Paperback
An excellent biography - Rosemary Hill really brings Pugin alive as if he were a contemporary. I haven't been able to put this book down since I first opened it.

David Palmer
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By SJR
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I ordered this book I am ashamed to admit that I had only the sketchiest knowledge of Pugin - I had vague ideas about his involvement in the design of the Houses of Parliament and Victorian churches, and his association with the Oxford Movement, and imagined him in my ignorance to be some sort of consumptive intellectual. Of course, I now that I was hopelessly wrong in my woolly assumptions! But I wanted to fill in this gap in my knowledge, and this book not only told me everything that I could want to know about Pugin and his life and career, but what is even better, made an entertaining and absorbing story of it. I really could not put the book down - I read far too late into the night several times, which is not what you would necessarily expect of a biography of an eminent Victorian, especially one who was an architect and designer. I learned that not only was Pugin a most fascinating individual, a complete maverick, and unconventional in so many ways - a real character - but also quite amazingly talented, often misunderstood, and a man who in a lot of ways led quite a sad, although pretty eventful, life. Rosemary Hill skilfully tells the tale of his personal life and relationships as well that of his professional one - they are really quite inextricable - and also puts his work in the context of what was happening in the world of design and architecture around him. His is the story of a genius manqué which really should be better known as he had such a huge and continuing influence, often unacknowledged, on his contemporaries and those who came after him.

I can highly recommend this book, and not just to those who are knowledgeable and interested in architecture and design.
... Read more ›
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
An extraordinarily enlightening and precious biography because it not only lets you in to Pugin's mind, life and works, but it also paints such a complete and fascinating picture of early nineteenth century life during his time. We learn of the trials and tribulations that a talented Pugin went through to get any form of recognition, how hard he had worked all his short life to the cost of his family and himself, and especially how he had to contend with the ups and (more often) downs. We learn of the Catholic struggle to finally become re-accepted in English society and efforts to take advantage over the Protestants when they could; it could all have ended so differently. This was a privilege to read. If I ever have to clear my bookshelves, this one will stay.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A superb account of a brief but spectacular life 27 Feb 2012
By ntfc2
Format:Paperback
What Rosemary Hill achieves in this book is remarkable. Pugin fitted more into 40 years than most people could achieve in double that time. He lived through a time of rapid change, and to a degree helped shape that change. The Victorian civic architecture of the 2nd half of the 19th Century is in no small part due to Pugin's influence.

Hill makes an excellent job of helping us to understand the factors that formed Pugin the man. Shaped by his influences Pugin soon forged his own course. His religion and his work going hand in hand. This is no hagiography. Hill shows that Pugin was not always a sympathetic character, and his treatment of Mary Amherst after the break-up of their affair was harsh and unpleasant to say the least. Yet through it all we see a man who inspired incredible devotion from his friends. A genius, flawed perhaps, but nontheless a genius whose early death was an incalculable loss.

Others came after Pugin. Arguably others implemented his vision better than Pugin himself. We shall never know what the mature Pugin might have given us. We are left with many flashes of genius and hints of what could have come next. The strength of Rosemary Hill's book is that it leaves us wanting more, and the pangs of regret that come with knowing that there is no more.

I loved reading about Pugin, and through this book I learned to appreciate his work and the broader worlds of 19th architecture, politics and religion. Kudos to Rosemary Hill!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars wonderful insight into Victorian Britain
This book gives a fantastic insight into one of the most interesting characters from the Victorian era. Written in an engaging fashion.
Published 8 days ago by samira aslam
4.0 out of 5 stars Great for academics
A well-researched and beautifully written account of Pugin and his world. A useful addition to my bookshelf. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Rayna Vincent
4.0 out of 5 stars Good companion to Pugin's Contrasts
Was recommended to read this as part of my research into Pugin's writings on contrasts. Well written and informative if you like to know about the person behind the work. Read more
Published 5 months ago by whitecords
5.0 out of 5 stars A.W. Pugin : A Man of Contrasts; A Man of Genius
This monumental work of Rosmary Hill must be the definitive biography of that romantic Christian visionary, Pugin. Read more
Published 12 months ago by J. Nichols
5.0 out of 5 stars A master-work of a biography
This is rare book indeed. Most biographers paint a single picture of their subject as either saint or monster (depending on what sells books)and miss the complex multi-faceted and... Read more
Published 13 months ago by David West
5.0 out of 5 stars Pugin
A wonderful, comprehensive study of Pugin, his family, friends and associates. The writing of this book must have necessitated a tremendous amount of research and it shows. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Stanley Gray
4.0 out of 5 stars A love-hate relationship with both Pugin and the book.
God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain

This is clearly a well researched and competently written book. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2009 by Clare Topping
2.0 out of 5 stars Wrong format
I believe that this book's main fault is that it is in the wrong format i.e. a paper back with too many words and not enough photgraphs. Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2009 by E. Carter
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