INSIGHTS ON THE GOTHIC REVIVAL

This review article discusses three recent volumes: Edmund Harris, The Rogue Goths: R L Roumieu, Joseph Peacock and Bassett Keeling (2024); Peter N Lindfield, The Intimacies of George Shaw (1810–76): diaries and letters of a Gothic architect, antiquary and forger (2024); Nicholas Olsberg (photographs by James Morris) The Master Builder William Butterfield and His Times (2024). Taken together, these books show that the architect-monograph can still make an important contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the Gothic Revival. Nicholas Olsberg’s book is a tour de force, contextualising this great master and, at the same time, writing with great sensitivity about his aesthetic genius. The accompanying photographs commissioned specially for the book capture the strange presence that distinguishes so much of Butterfield’s architecture. Peter Lindfield brings to life an important regional figure who entered the field without any real training. Shaw was self-taught and his career combined dealing, decorative arts and interiors and architectural design, spanning the gap between amateur and professional. Finally, there is Edmund Harris’ insightful analysis of three architects known for their stylistic invention but whose careers to this point have been little understood. The present review contextualises these studies in the modern historiography of the Gothic Revival.