Friendships - Hardcover

Mark Girouard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1908524960 ISBN 13: 9781908524966

Publisher: Wilmington Square Books, 2017

Synopsis

This is, in effect, a hymn to friendships, and what they have meant to the architectural historian Mark Girouard, portrayed by means of thirty letters or other communications from friends, and by Girouard's writing about them. Some are grand, a few are or were famous, but others not at all so, for the point of the book is that friendship has nothing at all to do with fame or success, but with that sudden click of reciprocity, or pleasure in companionship, that helps make 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, the champion child dancer from Glasgow; eat disgusting rook pie off Bourbon gold plate with the Duke of Wellington; scribble tipsy jokes in London pubs with lazy but delightful Peter Ferriday; be touched by the surprising love life of Sir John Summerson, loftiest of architectural historians; grieve at the decline of Mariga Guinness, gifted, drunken and lovable queen of the Irish Georgians; and hear how a Chelsea landlady modelled for the figure of Peace, riding her skyline chariot on the arch at London's Hyde Park Corner.

The letters are reproduced in whole or part in facsimile, and the varying handwritings reveal the characters of the writers and help bring them to life in a way impossible for the all-conquering email.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Girouard is the leading architectural historian of his generation and the author of numerous books, most notably Life in the English Country House which won numerous prizes and sold some 200,000 copies in the 1980s.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wilmington Square Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908524960
• ISBN 13: 9781908524966
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192