Gavin Stamp

Since 2004 Gavin Stamp, one of Britains most eminent and readable architectural historians, has written a monthly column for Apollo, the esteemed architecture and fine art magazine. The subject is simply whatever in design or architecture happens to take his fancy. It might be the splendid reopening of the magnificent Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, or the dilapidation of a little-known church in Eastbourne, the much-lamented demise of the original Routemaster bus, or the colossal majesty of the airship sheds that housed the R.101.

Excursions in English Architecture and Design

Anti-Ugly

The destruction meted out on Britain's city centres during the twentieth century, by the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe and city-planners. This volume reproduces hundreds of photographs of cities from Plymouth to Dundee, all of streets and buildings that are gone for ever. It is also an evocation of Britain's architectural past.

Britain's Lost Cities

These days it seems obvious that stupendous constructions like St Pancras Station should be preserved and restored. But as recently as the 1970s Glasgow’s superb St Enoch’s Hotel made way for a shopping centre, and in the 1960s St Pancras itself was also earmarked for demolition. ‘Victorian’ was a term of abuse. Add in wartime bombing by the Luftwaffe, and town planners eager for ring roads and multi-storeys, and the destruction is shocking. This poignant, angry book, full of stunning images, chronicles the catastrophic swathe cut through our architectural heritage by the twentieth century’s sustained antipathy to the nineteenth, entirely through buildings that have disappeared. Of the 200 notable examples of Victorian architecture illustrated in this book, from the magnificent Imperial Institute in Kensington to the vast country house of Eaton Hall, not one still exists. A photograph is all we have left. As well as architectural causes célèbres like the Euston Arch and London’s Coal Exchange, Gavin Stamp turns up many lesser-known Victorian buildings, like the extraordinary Gothic battlements of Columbia Market in East London, or Chatsworth’s soaring glasshouse streamlined like a spaceship. Surprising, chastening, but also uplifting, Lost Victorian Britain is a memorable journey back into a world we should never have lost.

How the Twentieth Century Destroyed the Nineteenth Century's Architectural Masterpieces

Lost Victorian Britain

Alexander Thomson produced a distinctive modern architecture based on a fundamentalist classicism that earned him the nickname 'Greek'. This is a thorough visual guide to his work, including buildings now demolished.

Alexander 'Greek' Thomson

The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing is the principal, tangible expression of Britain's defining experience in the Great War—the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It bears the names of 73,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found at the end of that bloody and futile campaign. Visited by tens of thousands of tourists, it holds notable elements of the 20th century while casting a shadow into the future, extending beyond the dead of the Holocaust to the "disappeared" of South America and Tianenmen. A brilliant study to arguably the finest structure erected by any British architect in the 20th century, the origin of this marvel is revealed here in the context of commemorating the fallen, considering its historical significance, and touching on its resonances today.

The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

Presenting a stunning collection of the architectural designs of Edward Lutyens throughout the many phases of his acclaimed career, this beautifully presented study includes examples of his Surrey-vernacular style, early arts-and-crafts houses, and his carefully composed classical houses.

Country Houses ; from the Archives of Country Life

Edwin Lutyens

Colin Amery

Kerry Downes

This fascinating book tells the story of the creation of Nicholas Hawksmoor's celebrated eighteenth-century London church, St George's, Bloomsbury, and its recent multimillion-dollar restoration, underwritten by the World Monuments Fund in Britain and the Paul Mellon Estate. Commissioned by Parliament in 1711 and completed in 1731, the church, best known from its depiction in Hogarth's 1751 engraving, Gin Lane, has been hailed as a masterpiece of Late Baroque architecture and one of the finest churches in England built between the Reformation and the nineteenth century. The renovation, due to be completed in late 2007 with the reconstruction of a new gallery to match the original, has restored the church as it was designed by Hawksmoor, re-establishing its original orientation and reinstating the whimsical lions, unicorns, festoons and crowns that originally graced its celebrated spire. The statues had been removed in 1871, having been declared "very doubtful ornaments". Horace Walpole once described the whole tower as "a masterpiece of absurdity". St George's Bloomsbury, London is the second in a series of books co-published by Scala and the World Monuments Fund (WMF), the foremost private organisation dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage around the globe through a comprehensive program of fieldwork, advocacy, training, and grant-making. Since its founding in 1965, WMF has worked to stem the loss of more than 430 irreplaceable sites in 83 countries Colin Amery is a writer and architectural historian, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a passionate conservationist. He is Director of World Monuments Fund in Britain. Bonnie Burnham is President, World Monuments Fund. The Revd Perry Butler is Rector, St George's, Bloomsbury. The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres is Bishop of London. Kerry Downes is the leading authority on English Baroque architecture, and the biographer of Nicholas Hawksmoor, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh. Gavin Stamp is an architectural historian and writer. Until recently, he was chairman of the Twentieth Century Society. 84 colour & 12 b/w illustrations

A Hawksmoor Masterpiece Restored

St George's, Bloomsbury

Edwin Lutyens' Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval in Northern France, visited annually by tens of thousands of tourists, is arguably the finest structure erected by any British architect in the twentieth century. It is the principal, tangible expression of the defining event in Britain's experience and memory of the Great War, the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, and it bears the names of 73,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found at the end of that bloody and futile campaign. This brilliant study by an acclaimed architectural historian tells the origin of the memorial in the context of commemorating the war dead; it considers the giant classical brick arch in architectural terms, and also explores its wider historical significance and its resonances today. So much of the meaning of the twentieth century is concentrated here; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing casts a shadow into the future, a shadow which extends beyond the dead of the Holocaust, to the Gulag, to the 'disappeared' of South America and of Tianenmen. Reissued in a beautiful and striking new edition for the centenary of the Somme.

Since 2004 Gavin Stamp, one of Britain’s most eminent and readable architectural historians, has written a monthly column for Apollo, the esteemed architecture and fine art magazine. The subject is simply whatever in design or architecture happens to take his fancy. It might be the splendid reopening of the magnificent Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, or the dilapidation of a little-known church in Eastbourne; the much-lamented demise of the original Routemaster bus, or the colossal majesty of the airship sheds that housed the R.101. But while these pieces display a wonderful range and variety, they are unified by Stamp’s wider quest: to explore, define and champion the very Englishness of English architecture and design. When fine examples are preserved and restored, he celebrates; when they fall victim to philistine neglect – or, worse, demolition – he mourns. And when the elegant is overshadowed by the merely modish, he deplores. In Anti-Ugly, Stamp has selected the best of these ‘excursions’, producing a compulsively readable collection that builds into an eloquent, learned, trenchant and often indignant portrait of our national design heritage.

Gavin Stamp

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