Sir Edwin Lutyens - (Triglyph People) by Clive Aslet (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

As the first title in a new series from Triglyph Books, Clive Aslet has written a short biography of Sir Edwin Lutyens, among the greatest of British architects.

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) was one of the great architects of the twentieth century. His Edwardian country houses, surrounded by rhapsodic gardens, beguiled clients with their romance and wit. After 1918, the war memorials that he created symbolized a grieving nation's sense of loss. In the new capital of the British Raj, New Delhi, the Viceroy's House or Rashtrapati Bhavan had a footprint bigger than Versailles. His unfinished Liverpool Cathedral would have rivalled St Peter's in Rome.

Intensely shy, Lutyens hid his personality behind puns and jokes - and yet he could be called 'part mystic', a reference to an inner profundity. Rich in stories, this entertaining and stylish short biography is a major new study incorporating fresh research which shows this most charismatic of architects in a new light.

Review Quotes

"Any writer on Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) is at risk of nostalgia...Yet as Clive Aslet deftly points out in this book, the patrons of these country houses were anything but rural folk, just as Lutyens himself was very much a London figure...Aslet is at his best describing the social scene in which Lutyens operated; tellingly, the excellent index is a roll call of the high and mighty of the period. Yet Aslet also perceptively, but never pedantically, describes Lutyens's architecture...Aslet paints a vivid picture of Lutyens, his work and his social circle, and convincingly makes the case that, certainly for the first half of the twentieth century, he was deserving of this title."--Andrew Hopkins "The Burlington Magazine June 2025"

About the Author

Clive Aslet is a visiting professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and the publisher of Triglyph Books. For many years he worked at the magazine Country Life, where he was editor from 1993 until 2006.

Since publishing The Last Country Houses with Yale University Press in 1982, he has written over 30 books. His titles for Triglyph include Old Homes, New Life: The resurgence of the British country house and Living Tradition: The Architecture and Urbanism of Hugh Petter. In 2021 he became chair of the Lutyens Trust. He is also a trustee of INTBAU and for a decade he was the founding honorary secretary of what is now the Twentieth Century Society.

Married with three children, Clive lives in London and Ramsgate.