The first comprehensive dictionary of everyone of importance in the creation of English architecture during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages This long-awaited work of scholarship provides a comprehensive dictionary of everyone of importance in the creation of English architecture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. With characteristically deft prose, Mark Girouard draws on a lifetime of experience in the study of architectural history to assess the impact of some six hundred master craftsmen, surveyors, designers and patrons at work between 1540 and 1640. Surveying a period not covered by other dictionaries, this book is a key text for students and scholars of British architecture and its allied arts between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mark Girouard's lively comments and felicitous style also make it an enjoyable browse for anyone interested in the magnificent buildings that formed the background to the music of Dowland, Wilbye and Byrd; the fascinating political intrigues of the Tudor court; and the writings of Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Campion and Jonson. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Mark Girouard has, he claims, scarcely ever thrown away a letter that he has received, and here he selects and reproduces 29 of them, ranging from his early childhood during the war to recent years, and uses them to characterise and memorialise their authors who range from the grand, the distinguished and the once or still famous, to the entirely ordinary, and from minor British gentry to Belgian monks, from American businessmen to African street traders. In the process a selective autobiography emerges as he discusses his relationship with this diverse crowd, and at the same time he paints a riveting picture of Bohemian cultural life in post-war Britain and Ireland. And the point of it all is that friendship has nothing at all to do with fame, success or wealth, but entirely with that sudden click of reciprocity, or pleasure in companionship, that makes life worth living. So the reader can savour walks with John Betjeman through the ruins of blitzed London, or with Denys Lasdun through the concrete dramas of the National Theatre; be regaled with stories about the Gorbals by Ruby Milton, champion child dancer from Glasgow; eat disgusting rook pie off Bourbon gold plate with the Duke of Wellington; be touched by the surprising love life of Sir John Summerson, loftiest of scholars; grieve at the decline of Mariga Guiness, gifted, drunken and loveable queen of the Irish Georgians; and hear how a Chelsea landlady modelled half-naked for the figure of Fame riding her chariot on top of the arch at Hyde Park Corner, and myriad other life stories, poignant, moving and compelling in turn.

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