Acknowledgments
This book was written during study leave kindly granted for the purpose by the Kent School of Architecture and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Kent, and I would like to thank my Head of School, Professor Don Gray, for his generous and trusting support throughout. It is also a pleasure to have another opportunity to thank Alastair Service, who introduced me to Edwardian architecture some 35 years ago.
Many people have been extremely helpful to me during the writing of this book, and some have saved me from embarrassing errors and omissions. My thanks to my brother William Brittain-Catlin and to Rupert Thomas, the editor of The World of Interiors and my loyal patron, for reading and commenting on some of the chapters. I am particularly grateful to Edward Bottoms, archivist at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the school’s librarian Eleanor Gawne and photographer Sue Barr, and also to the following: Gerry Adler; Eddie Anderson; Cressida Annesley, Canterbury Cathedral Library; Clive Aslet; Jamie Barnes; Neil Bingham; Shirley and Romanos Brihi; Konrad Buhagiar; Rupert Butler; Mark Connelly; Tim den Dekker; Nick Dermott; Janet Durden Hay; Björn Ehrlemark; Percy Flaxman; Jonathan Glancey; Simon Henley; Henrik Hilbig; Mark Horton; Xavier Iglesias, DPZ; Jonathan Jones; Josh Mardell; Heather Nathan, Yale University Press; Craig Page; Hannah Parham; Ulrik Plesner; Seamus Perry and Anna Sandler, Balliol College, Oxford; Alan Powers; Karen Sampson, Lloyds Banking Group Archives; Paul Sharrock; Rev. Christopher Skingley; Gavin Stamp; Charlotte Stead, Keswick Museum and Art Gallery; Peter Morris Dixon, Robert A.M. Stern Architects; Louise Velazquez; Tracey Walker, Manchester Art Gallery; Julie Wing; and Ellis Woodman; and to Kurt Helfrich and the staff of the British Architectural Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum and at 66 Portland Place in London. I would like especially to thank my friends Mosette Broderick and Andrew Saint, and my early mentor Peter Blundell Jones, to all three of whom I owe a great deal beyond this book.
I am extremely grateful to Roger Conover at MIT Press for his valued advice and support throughout the execution of this curious project, and to Justin Kehoe, Matthew Abbate, and their team for their efficient management of it. I would also like to thank Gillian Beaumont for her superb copyediting.
But above all I want to express my appreciation to Keith—thanks to whose friendship I have, after what seemed to me like five decades of loserdom, finally become something of a winner myself.