Currently reading.....

   'George Fredrick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America' by Michael Hall.  Bodley, (1827-1902) was one of the foremost architects of the late Gothic Revival; and an architect of refined and superlative taste.  The designer of some wonderful churches.  This hefty book, which is lavishly illustrated, is the first monograph to be published on this slightly enigmatic yet highly influential man. Sir John Ninian Comper, Robert Lorimer and Charles Ashbee all trained and worked in his office. 

   Bodley began as the designer of High Victorian churches, before reacting against that very hard type of architecture and returning to the style of Pugin, creating churches that are at once deeply rooted in the English Medieval tradition but open to influences from Europe; and, like George Gilbert Scott, he was one of those late Victorian architects who dispensed with Gothic when it came to domestic design contributing to the emergence of the 'Queen Anne Revival'.  Bodley's mature churches are elegant and refined perhaps even a little patrician, but they represent to me at least an intellectual and sensual anglo-catholic culture I find deeply attractive and satisfying.