Pevsner on Art and Architecture
The Radio Talks of Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Edited by Stephen Games
Pevsner on Art and Architecture brings together for the first time in one volume the remarkable radio talks of one of the 20th century's most influential, learned and stimulating writers on art and architecture
A refugee from Nazi Germany, Nikolaus Pevsner became a central player in the intellectual and cultural life of his adopted country. Almost impossibly energetic, efficient and effective, his contribution both to scholarship and to the public appreciation of art and architecture was immense. In addition to the famous Buildings of England series - known commonly as "Pevsner" - he wrote standard textbooks, held professorships, delivered the Reith lectures, promoted with equal fervour Victorian and Bauhaus architecture; and for over twenty-five years from the end of the war was a regular broadcaster for the BBC.
Here his talks ranged from a discussion of Breughel's art to the buildings of Gaudi; from a series on Englishmen's castles to meditations on modern town planning; from Elizabethan mannerism to contemporary American architecture - and of course to his ground-breaking series of Reith Lectures on "The Englishness of English Art".
Uniquely lively, engaging, descriptive and evocative, they are a joy to read again and again: word pictures full of a visual intelligence, a mind encountering the observed and making judgements that carried enormous weight in shaping our sense of the society we live in. On Pevsner's Buildings of England: "There is still nothing in the world, (repeat, the world, not just this country) to match these books" (Geoffrey Moorhouse, Guardian)
"Pevsner was a delightful mixture of erudition, pedantry, charm and, above all, opinion" (Jonathan Glancey, Guardian)
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About Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-83) was one of the most significant and influential writers on art and architecture that the twentieth century has produced. Born in Leipzig of Russian Jewish stock, he left Germany in 1935 under Hitler. He settled in London and in due course became Professor of History of Art at Birkbeck College (University of London), Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge and a Gold Medallist of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Famously he wrote the 46-volume series The Buildings of England (commonly known as 'Pevsner'), first published from 1951-74; he was also founding editor of The Pelican History of Art and of The Buildings of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A frequent broadcaster - and the Reith lecturer in 1947 - Pevsner sought to further broaden public understanding of art and architecture in numerous lectures and talks.
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