 | By: Lisa Jardine Binding: Hardcover Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd ISBN: 0007107757 ISBN-13: 9780007107759 Released: 02 Sep 2002 RRP: Average Rating:  |
This book is not a traditional biography that focuses exclusively on the primary individual & only touches on his peers when appropriate. Lisa Jardine explores in varying detail, at times very carefully, the lives of the men that were contemporaries of Sir Wren. These detours will be welcome by those who already are well educated as to who Sir Wren was & what he did. If you are picking up this book for an in depth view of this man alone, this book will not satisfy your goal. An example that literallly illustrates my point is the 16 color plates that are to be found in the book. Only 3 pages are dedicated to his architectural drawings, as many are dedicated to documents that bear only his signature, & more are dedicated to portraits of the royal heads of state he served together with portraits of their children. The same can be said for many of the black & white reproductions throughout the book, they are primarily of his peers, friends, & at times his adversaries. There are contemporary photographs of some of the churches he reconstructed with mention of the architectural sleights of hand that were used to make the buildings appear to the eye differently than they actuallly sat on the site. But the details are not shown, simply the building, I wanted the details.
The author also spends a great deal of time on the order of The Knights of the Garter. This is a fascinating subject & group of people that has catalyzed entire books on its own. In this work it again occupies color plates that I would have like to have seen occupied by Sir Wren's work, I did not need to see the front page of a book about the society that was not even written by Sir Wren. There was also a style employed by the author that at times, while very accurate, was redundant. Lisa Jardine would describe an event, for example between Sir Wren & a friend; she would then place the original letter that would once again explain what she had just told the reader. Now reading the original source material is interesting, but in a 483 page book that purports to cover the 91 year life of one of History's noted personages, once this additional material is subtracted together with alll the photos & images that are not of Sir Wren & his work, the amount of the book dedicated to the man & his work is substantiallly less than the whole.
I enjoyed the book but it is not a book that after a reader completes it, will set it down & feel they have a good understanding of the marvels he created for London & its Royal Families. His life was too long, too complex, & too varied in its pursuits to crowd his story with so much material on others. There is no reason the 16 pages of color plates could not have been devoted to his work, I did not need to see the children of kings & queens. I wanted to see his buildings & his architectural drawings that are beautiful art by themselves.
By alll means read & enjoy this book, it will certainly cause you too seek out more reading on one of the ore remarkable men to have even inhabited London, & to have placed his mark on History.
The author has skillfully merged her undoubted expertise & passion for science with artful writing, built around a gripping narrative style.
I can't recommend this highly enough -- it's one of the best books I've read this year, & definitely the best history/biography book.
Below are some of the current bestsellers - click them for a price comparison and find the cheapest place to buy!
