Mark Girouard – författare

In this book, Mark Girouard tells how he became intrigued by architecture as a small boy. Combining anecdote and information about both buildings and their inhabitants, he writes of the places he has visited in town and country. Girouard provides an interpretation of the English origins of rococo art, he describes the formation of an English seaside resort, recreates the Georgian architecture and society of Jane Austen's world and traces changing attitudes towards landscape in architecture from 18th-century Britain to 20th-century America. Old Slaughter's Coffee-House in the mid-18th century; Holdenby, an Elizabethan great house build by a lord who was called by his contemporaries "a mere vegetable of the court that sprung up at night and sank again at...noon"; Belvedere, the 18th-century Irish country house that was witness to a tragic story of adultery and revenge; these are just a few of the buildings described by Girouard in these essays on architecture and society in bygone eras of England and Ireland.

Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture— the uniquely strange and exciting buildings built by the great and powerful, ranging from huge houses to gem-like pavilions and lodges designed for feasting and hunting—is a phenomenon as remarkable as the literature that accompanied it, the literature of Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, and others. In this beautiful and fascinating book, Mark Girouard discusses social structure and the way of life behind it, the evolution of the house plan, the excitement of English patrons and craftsmen as they learned not only about the classic Five Orders and the buildings of Ancient Rome, the surprising wealth of architectural drawings that survive from the period, the inroads of foreign craftsmen who brought new fashions in ornament, but also the strength of the native tradition that was creatively integrated with the “antique” style. Behind the book is a vivid consciousness of the European scene: Italy, France, central Europe and above all the Low Countries and their influence on England. But the principal argument of the book is the unique individuality of the English achievement. The result of new research and fieldwork, as well as a lifetime’s observation and scholarship, this remarkable book displays Girouard’s unique sense of style and his enduring excitement for the architecture of the period.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

A selective autobiography of the most successful, most celebrated and most important architectural historian of his generation. Elegant and moving reminiscences with significant Irish, catholic and architectural resonance by a well established and much loved writer with many successful books in the catalogue.