You have to go back a very long time, perhaps to H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, to find a writer on architectural history who was themselves a distinguished designer. And even he would never have been capable of producing so perceptive, so clever, so enjoyable a book as John Stewart’s Architect to the British Empire, his uninhibited biography of Herbert Baker, which appeared in 2021. The author, responsible for several first-rate buildings as deputy county architect in Buckinghamshire, liberally praised by the authors of the Pevsner guide, has now turned his attention to the subject of architectural sculpture between the eras of the Crystal Palace and the Festival of Britain.

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