Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life - Hardcover

Harries, Susie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701168390 ISBN 13: 9780701168391

Publisher: Random House UK, 2011

Synopsis

The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to diaries and personal papers, as well as the archive of Pevsner's landmark series, The Buildings of England Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen.When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 – 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks. Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen—secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another 60 years—reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart). Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind. Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness, and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life—as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history—illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945.

About this title

About the Author:

Susie Harries is a writer specializing in culture, history, and the arts. Born in 1951 in London, where she now lives with her husband Meirion and their two sons, she read classics and classical philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge, and St Anne's College, Oxford. She has co-authored seven books with her husband, including major works on twentieth-century arts: The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (1981), The War Artists (1983) and A Pilgrim Soul: a Life of Elisabeth Lutyens (1989). She has also written for the Independent and reviewed books on the arts for The Times Literary Supplement.

Review:

"An impressive biography of a remarkable man. On both counts it deserves to be widely read."  —Times Literary Supplement

"Eminently readable, a must for lovers of art history and architecture alike."  —Time Out

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House UK
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0701168390
• ISBN 13: 9780701168391
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 866