Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
 

Victorian Architecture: Diversity & Invention
 

By means of a magnificent collection of illustrations and an authoritative text, Curl brings to life the great architectural achievements of the Victorian Age which responded to unprecedented challenges and opportunities with confident, colourful, rumbustiously eclectic buildings. He deals with the palette of styles available to the Victorians; entirely new building types; novel materials; ecclesiastical buildings that, arguably, were superior to mediaeval exemplars; the responses of a vital society to contemporary challenges; and how they went further than anyone since Roman times to potty-train Urban Man. All this is set firmly within the context of the intellectual complexities of the Age, illuminated by Curl's mellifluous and jargon-free prose. Wearing his learning lightly, he presents his case with gusto, elegance, grace, and wit, bringing the Victorian period to life in a work which will give readers much to ponder, savour, and enjoy.

Classical Architecture:
An Introduction to Its Vocabulary and Essentials, with a Select Glossary of Terms  

This beautifully illustrated book is concerned with the fundamental principles and various aspects of Classical Architecture, including a detailed, illustrated glossary that is almost a dictionary in itself. The author describes in clear, straightforward, jargon-free language the origins of Classical Architecture in Greek and Roman Antiquity, and outlines its continuous development, through its various manifestations during the Renaissance, its transformations in Baroque and Rococo phases, its re-emergence in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Neo-Classicism, and its survival into modern times. The text and illustrations celebrate the richness of the Classical architectural vocabulary, grammar, and language, and demonstrate the enormous range of themes and motifs embraced by the subject.

The Egyptian Revival:
Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West
 

In this beautifully and comprehensively illustrated and closely argued book, a completely updated and much expanded third edition of his magisterial survey, Professor Curl describes in lively and stimulating prose the numerous revivals of the Egyptian style from Antiquity to the present day, drawing on a wealth of sources. His pioneering and definitive work analyses the remarkable and persistent influence of Ancient Egyptian culture on the West. The author deftly develops his argument that the civilisation of Ancient Egypt is central, rather than peripheral, to the development of much Western architecture, art, design, and religion. He charts the persistence of Egyptian motifs in design from Graeco-Roman Antiquity, through the Mediaeval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neo-Classical periods, and goes on to trace the rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth century, twentieth-century manifestations of Egyptianisms prompted by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and various aspects of Egyptianising tendencies in the Art Deco style and afterwards. Most startling of all, the author argues that Christianity owes as much, and probably more, to the Nile as to the Jordan.

The Honourable The Irish Society
 

Kensal Green Cemetery

Piety Proclaimed:
An Introduction to Places of Worship in Victorian England
 

The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914
 

The Victorian Celebration of Death

In this finely illustrated and well-researched book, Curl has rescued much fascinating material from undeserved oblivion, and his work fills a genuine gap. From humble working-class exequies to the massive outpourings of grief at the State funerals of Wellington and Queen Victoria herself, the book covers an immense canvas: disposal of the dead as part of the great sanitary reforms of the epoch (though given appropriate expression in cemeteries as works of art); the history of the urban cemeteries with their architecture and landscapes; the ephemera of death and dying (including wreaths, mourning-cards and jewellery, elaborate hearses crowded with ostrich-feather plumes, mourning-dress, and much else); State funerals as national spectacles; and the utilitarian reactions towards the end of the nineteenth century. Combining wit with compassion, Curl wears his learning lightly, and his taste for the eerie is delicately balanced by his literary personality. His achievement is as well-ordered as any sumptuous funeral, and is lucid as well as entertaining, with many surprises and associated delights. His robustly argued and beautifully written reportage makes his unique and elegant book an agreeable companion to the non-eternal bedside.

The Victorian Celebration of Death (Thrupp, Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd 2004). ISBN: 0-7509-3873-0 (pbk.)
Although out of print, a few copies of this book are still available direct from the author - click for order form

Death and Architecture
 

The subjects of commemorative structures and of cemeteries have suffered a curious neglect in recent years. Yet travellers from Herodotus to Baedeker have sought out tombs and mausolea of earlier times as self-evidently significant and worth seeing. The contemporary traveller misses much if cemeteries and the architecture of death are avoided.

Curl is recognised as a pioneering scholar in several fields of research, not least that concerned with a celebration of death in architectural terms. In this handsome work his wisdom and compassion are brought to a subject that all too often is dismissed as unimportant: he demonstrates that in fact death has inspired some of the noblest monumental buildings ever conceived in the West. His book's message rings out as clearly as the Last Trump: the tomb has been the great chronicler of taste throughout all history.

The Life and Work of Henry Roberts (1803-76), Architect:
The Evangelical Conscience and the Campaign for Model Housing and Healthy Nations

Henry Roberts was a successful Victorian architect and reformer whose work influenced the design of housing for the poor for generations, internationally, and whose life sheds fascinating light on both the Evangelical Movement and the inter-linked philanthropic groups in Europe. It is surprising that the importance of his career had been relatively under-estimated until the appearance of this lively, scholarly, detailed, well-illustrated, definitive biography in 1983. Having obtained his early training in the offices of the distinguished architects Charles Fowler (1792-1867) and Robert Smirke (1780-1867) and at the Royal Academy Schools, Roberts (who had worked on the drawings for the British Museum while with Smirke) won the competition for the design of the Hall for The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers of the City of London in 1831, and established a prosperous practice with many and varied commissions. One of his assistants was the young George Gilbert Scott (1811-78), who was to go on to great things himself.

From 1835 Roberts became involved in the design of model housing for the poor, and from 1844 was intimately connected with the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes: his Model Housing for the Great Exhibition of 1851 (paid for by Prince Albert) became world famous, and his designs were exemplars for decades to come throughout Europe and America. Roberts was a prolific writer and a tireless advocate of housing reform, whose publications were translated into various languages. His links with philanthopists in France, Germany, and Italy, his network of influential clients, and his associations with the Evangelical Movement in the Church of England and similar Protestant Evangelical groups in Europe (especially in France and Germany) furthered the spread of his ideas and designs both during his working career and, after the scandal that led to his departure to Italy in 1853, for the 23 years of his very active retirement there. Curl's vivid and thoroughly researched text is illustrated with a very comprehensive record of Roberts' buildings in the form of photographs, original drawings, engravings, lithographs, water-colours, and sketches to produce, together with a delightful study of Roberts the man and his family background (with portraits discovered by Curl), a thorough and monumental work that will appeal to a wide range of readers, including social and political historians, as well and those interested in architectural history.

The Life and Work of Henry Roberts (1803-76), Architect: The Evangelical Conscience and the Campaign for Model Housing and Healthy Nations (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd., 1983).ISBN: 0-85033-446-2 (hbk.)
Although out of print a few copies of this book are still available direct from the author - click for order form

A Celebration of Death: An Introduction to Some of the Buildings, Monuments, and Settings of Funerary Architecture in the Western European Tradition
 

The subjects of funerary architecture, of commemorative structures, and of cemeteries, have suffered a curious neglect at the hands of recent writers until Curl's works started to redress the balance and inform a whole range of new studies now eagerly pursued by younger men and women. Travellers from Herodotus to Baedeker have sought out the tombs and mausolea of prehistory, of Classical, and of mediaeval times, but the cemeteries of London and of other great cities have largely been ignored by commentators. Is this, perhaps, because we play down death, robbing it of its significance, and disposing of our dead as we dispose of unwanted waste products? If so, this is a comparatively recent attitude, for even the Victorians invested Death with all due ceremony, and their monuments reflect belief in certain Resurrection. Today, those monuments are often neglected and vandalised: the ephemeral nature of life, of fame, and of love is obvious to the beholder of overgrown graveyards and wrecked monuments.

Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival: A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste

In this beautifully illustrated book Professor Curl offers a comprehensive guide to the numerous revivals of the Egyptian style from Antiquity to the present day. This pioneering and definitive work analyses the influence of Ancient Egypt on art, architecture, design, and religion, and outlines the astonishing persistence of Egyptianising themes throughout two millennia of the History of Taste. The author develops his lively argument throughout the book, focusing on his case that Egyptian civilisation is central, rather than peripheral, to the development of European culture. Egyptomania charts the persistence of Egyptian motifs in design from Ancient Greece and Rome, through the Mediaeval and Renaissance periods, and into Neo-Classicism after the Napoleonic campaigns in Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. It goes on to trace the rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth century, the twentieth-century Art Deco movement influenced by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and subsequent Egyptianising tendencies, to the present day.

Essential reading for students of art, art history, design, and architectural history, and for all those interested in the History of Taste, aspects of religion, and the remarkable absorption of Egyptian and Egyptianising aspects into Western European culture.

Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival: A Recurring Theme in the History of Taste (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994). ISBN: 0-7190-4126-0 (hbk.)
Although out of print a few copies of this book are still available direct from the author - click for order form

Georgian Architecture
 

This book is a fully illustrated guide to the architecture of the British Isles during the reigns of the first four Georges (1714-1830). To many people the term 'Georgian' suggests a dignified, often symmetrical facade of brick, with elegant sash-windows, a doorcase (usually with a fanlight), and a well-mannered and reticent appearance. However, there was far more to Georgian architecture than that. Curl shows the remarkable diversity of the architecture created during the era, from the grander Classicism influenced by the architecture of Italy, notably that of Andrea Palladio (1508-80), to the exotic tastes for Chinoiserie, Rococo, Gothick, and even the Indian (or 'Hindoo') styles. He discusses all these aspects, and also sets the scene in respect of notions concerned with the aesthetic categories of the Beautiful, the Picturesque, and the Sublime, drawing attention especially to the importance of the Picturesque during the Georgian period.  His handsome book is a celebration of the main themes found in building-design of the time, and an examination of the stylistic choices of the age: Palladianism, the search for uncorrupted Classical sources through the study of Antiquity, the various revivals of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian styles, the taste for the exotic and for Orientalism, and the growing interest in Mediaeval architecture, monastic remains, and ruins which played such an important part in the Gothic Revival.

Georgian Architecture (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1993 & 2002). ISBN: 0-7153-9851-2
Although out of print a few copies of this book are still available direct from the author - click for order form