A Lust For Window Sills
Read Excerpt

A Lust For Window Sills

by Harry Mount

Buy Now:

Amazon Blackwell's Bookshop.org Foyles See All

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349121062

Price: £10.99

ON SALE: 17th March 2011

Genre: The Arts / Architecture / Individual Architects & Architectural Firms

Paperback

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

A brilliant, offbeat celebration of the great hodgepodge of British buildings’ Thomas Marks, Sunday Telegraph

From soaring Victorian railway stations to Edwardian terraces, from Perpendicular churches to Strawberry Hill, Britain has an architecture unrivalled in fertility, invention and heart-stopping beauty. And with some very strong feelings about window sills, Harry Mount could not be better qualified to survey it.

Meandering through garden suburbs and cathedral closes, discovering Moghul palaces in Gloucestershire and Egyptian sphinxes in Islington, A Lust for Window Sills is rich with anecdote, allusion and such inspired digressions as where to find the ugliest gargoyles and a liquid history of watering holes from gin palaces to the Rovers Return.

Reviews

Hannah Betts, INDEPENDENT
** ‘Mr Mount has produced an engaging text, amusingly written with a rich leaven of anecdote. There is too, a wealth of literary quotation and references to film and television, all refreshing departures in an introductory book on architecture. For all Mr
** 'brilliant, offbeat celebration . . . Harry Mount offers an uncluttered survey of British architectural history and clear, memorable explanations. It is packed with intelligent tips . . . Mounts is an irreverent entertaining guide - Thomas Marks, DAILY
** 'I have been endeavouring to console myself with Harry Mount's rather brilliant book A LUST FOR WINDOW SILLS, reckoning that an ability to distinguish my Doric from my Ionic might distract from my festering pile. It is damn fine stuff’
John Goodhall, COUNTRY Life
** 'It's a stroll, a jaunt, possibly a meander, taking the reader through all the architectural periods, around most building types and down numerous strange-smelling alleys. In his previous book, AMO, AMAS, AMAT, Harry Mount succeeded in introducing Lati
** 'Marvellous . . . this book is going to do for architectural history what Lynne Truss's EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES did for punctuation . . . Erudite, playful, witty and inspiring, it is destined to transform the way we look at old buildings . . . Barely a sentence passes without some fascinating and often incredibly useful titbit revealing itself . . . . You'll wonder how you lived without it
LITERARY REVIEW