Edwin Lutyens: the nation’s remembrancer-in-chief

In unduly modest remarks at the opening of this immaculate book, Clive Aslet, one of our most distinguished architectural historians, notes that there have been substantial biographies of Sir Edwin Lutyens, and he does not pretend to emulate them. His achievement, however, is considerable. Aslet has spent more than 45 years in intense and enthusiastic study of ‘Ned’ and his works, and has not merely an encyclopedic knowledge of what Lutyens built, but two other invaluable qualities. First, he appreciates the sort of man Lutyens was, the influences upon him, and how he interacted with his family (especially his wife Lady Emily) and his clients. Second, he has a deep understanding of the buildings, and the techniques employed in making them, and an enthusiasm he communicates unequivocally to his readers.

Take this description of a part of Heathcote, a house Lutyens built out of his Home Counties comfort zone for the Yorkshire wool baron John Thomas Hemingway:

Beneath the cornice is rustication, which merges with the Doric pilasters: a visual caprice which Lutyens repeated in later buildings. The vigorous projections and recessions of the façade have the plasticity of sculpture. Lutyens’s assurance is breathtaking.

Lutyens grew up in the Surrey hills – an area with which some of his houses, and the style in which he built them, are closely associated – and Aslet depicts an artist struggling against his instincts to go to parts of the country, and use materials, with which he was unfamiliar.

However, Lutyens then takes on more varied projects. He helps improve a house in the French seaside town of Varengeville; in mid-career he is commissioned to undertake his magnum opus, the Viceroy’s palace and associated buildings in New Delhi; and later he evolves into the nation’s architectural remembrancer-in-chief, designing the Cenotaph in Whitehall and some of the war cemeteries on the Western Front.