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Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
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Mr Barry's War - Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament after the Great Fire of 1834 (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R744
Discovery Miles 7 440
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Mr Barry's War - Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament after the Great Fire of 1834 (Hardcover)
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When the brilliant classical architect Charles Barry won the
competition to build a new, Gothic, Houses of Parliament in London
he thought it was the chance of a lifetime. It swiftly turned into
the most nightmarish building programme of the century. From the
beginning, its design, construction and decoration were a
battlefield. The practical and political forces ranged against him
were immense. The new Palace of Westminster had to be built on
acres of unstable quicksand, while the Lords and Commons carried on
their work as usual. Its river frontage, a quarter of a mile long,
needed to be constructed in the treacherous currents of the Thames.
Its towers were so gigantic they required feats of civil
engineering and building technology never used before. And the
interior demanded spectacular new Gothic features not seen since
the middle ages. Rallying the genius of his collaborator Pugin;
flanking the mad schemes of a host of crackpot inventors, ignorant
busybodies and hostile politicians; attacking strikes, sewage and
cholera; charging forward three times over budget and massively
behind schedule, it took twenty-five years for Barry to achieve
victory with his 'Great Work' in the face of overwhelming odds, and
at great personal cost. Mr Barry's War takes up where its
prize-winning prequel The Day Parliament Burned Down left off,
telling the story of how the greatest building programme in Britain
for centuries produced the world's most famous secular cathedral to
democracy.
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