St George's, Bloomsbury A Hawksmoor Masterpiece Restored

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