Building a Nation

More about the book

A history of Scottish architecture, from the Royal palaces of the Stuart kings to the recent flowering of creativity after the austerity of the post-war years. On the way, the text takes in the Edinburgh New Town, Victorian Glasgow, and the work of Patrick Geddes and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The book argues that the story of Scottish architecture is the story of attempts to shape, express, restrain or model a national character, not simply in the buildings themselves but through the personalities of those who built and commissioned them - from the Adam family and the legacy of the Grand Tour to the patronage of the 3rd Marquis of Bute, and from James IV and V's Renaissance extravaganzas to the Baronial revivalism of Lorimer.