Western Architecture: A Survey from Ancient Greece to the Present. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2000

Ian Sutton. Thames and Hudson. [pound]9.95 p.b. 384 pages. ISBN 0-500-20316-4. This survey may be called something of a 'politically correct' history of architecture: its 'value judgements' are fairly well founded in current thought. Not only palaces and country houses but churches and even West End theatres are described as 'blatant expressions of authority and power and the desire to display that power'.

(One had thought that churches and cathedrals were built to the glory of God and for worship.) One wonders if this is what the architects and builders thought. The survey begins with Greece and follows a fairly predictable course through Rome, the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, classical, nineteenth century revivals in Gothic and Classical styles, modernism and, finally, an epilogue on the legacy of modernism. There are some 456 illustrations which are neatly tied into the adjoining text. (J.M.)