Rehabilitating an Edwardian genius

Amelia Butler-Gallie

SIR EDWIN LUTYENS (1869–1944) WAS once venerated as one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century. Even if you haven’t heard of Lutyens, you have almost certainly encountered one of his designs. Perhaps the Cenotaph on Whitehall, or the bonkers Castle Drogo in Devon, St Jude’s Church in Hampstead, the Midland Bank on Poultry (now a five-star hotel), or, even farther afield, the grandiloquent Viceroy’s House in New Delhi. But over the past few decades, he has regrettably fallen out of fashion, with his reputational reach limited to a small coterie of Lutyens lovers. This is an appalling oversight. Clive Aslet’s reverential biography attempts to redress this evanescence. He is correct that it’s not just young architects and architectural historians who are “missing out” on this “master of form…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, August/September 2024

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