God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain
by Rosemary Hill
Pugin is not unknown in the way he was 50 years ago. Two major exhibitions in the 1990s, in New York and London, the formation of a flourishing Pugin Society and 3,000 people who one weekend last summer crowded in to see his highly original home in Ramsgate, lovingly restored by the Landmark Trust, attest to his growing popularity. However, he has hitherto lacked a considered full-length biography, despite the rumour of 1,000 pages going into Phoebe Stanton’s publisher’s office, from which they have yet to emerge. Tellingly, her name is absent from the voluminous bibliography in Rosemary Hill’s meticulously researched, admirably illustrated and beautifully written account of this maverick genius.
The bare facts have long been known; Benjamin Ferrey, his fellow pupil, published the first, somewhat bowdlerised, biography in 1861. Born late in their marriage to an émigré draughtsman and his better-connected English wife, Pugin had little formal education apart from some time in his father’s drawing school, yet he designed furniture for Windsor Castle at the age of 15.
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