Dan Cruickshank is an architectural historian and television presenter. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has sat on the Executive Committee of the Georgian Group, and the Architectural Panel of the National Trust. His previous work includes the BBC television programmes Civilisation Under Attack (2015) and At Home with the British (2016), and the books A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings (2015) and Spitalfields (2016). He lives in London.

Cruickshank’s enthusiasm for England’s vernacular architecture shines through every infectious sentence of this glorious book. His great skill is to dig down into details so that no building’s hidden corner, crooked window or clever keystone goes unremarked. At the same time, he situates these idiosyncratic details in a wider reading of the social and economic conditions which gave rise to every brick, strut and gurning gargoyle. A triumph

Dan Cruickshank is an architectural historian and television presenter. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has sat on the Executive Committee of the Georgian Group, and the Architectural Panel of the National Trust. His previous work includes the BBC television programmes Civilisation Under Attack (2015) and At Home with the British (2016), and the books A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings (2015) and Spitalfields (2016). He lives in London.

Cruickshank’s enthusiasm for England’s vernacular architecture shines through every infectious sentence of this glorious book. His great skill is to dig down into details so that no building’s hidden corner, crooked window or clever keystone goes unremarked. At the same time, he situates these idiosyncratic details in a wider reading of the social and economic conditions which gave rise to every brick, strut and gurning gargoyle. A triumph