Adrian Tinniswood

Why Christopher Wren died thinking his life had been a failure

The schemes that mattered most to him all foundered on the rocks of reality

Judged by his own standards, Wren was a failure: ‘St Paul’s Cathedral’, 1754, by Canaletto. Credit: Bridgeman Images 
issue 15 April 2023

When Sir Christopher Wren’s servant went to rouse his master from an afternoon nap on 25 February 1723, and found that the old man would never wake again, the reputation of the nation’s greatest architect was already on the wane. He had walked away from St Paul’s in a fit of pique, with the cathedral still unfinished.

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