In Ruins

Description

Why are we so fascinated by ruins? Do we see them as jig-saws and riddles or romantic evocations of the damage of Time, complete with crumbling stone and ivy? The author looks back to the start of the cult in the 18th century, when follies were built in English landscape gardens, artists and writers thrilled to Rome's poetry of decay, and in Paris, the great chef Careme even served blancmange in the shape of classical ruins. His narrative takes the reader from Troy and Pompei to Nazi fantasies, the shattered Statue of Liberty in the film "Planet of the Apes" and even to the Chelsea Flower Show's "Millenium Ruin".

Christopher Woodward was director of the Holbourne Museum of Art in Bath. His fascination with ruins began as a curator in Sir John Soane's Museum, London, the creation of a visionary architect haunted by the dramatic irony of time. He is the author of In Ruins.

This book itself is marvellous proof that the prospect of ruins can elicit the finest cadences of the language, whereby a languorous and clamant prose is drawn out of the spectacle of desuetude and decay-In Ruins is a rich and absorbing volume -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times * Woodward ravishes the reader with the sudden twists and turns of his elegant narrative as it moves in whatever direction he wishes it to go-Woodward's infectious enthusiasm for his subject will send his readers in many new directions -- Frances Spalding * Sunday Times * Christopher Woodward's paean of praise to the ruin fizzes with felicitous detail, anecdote, literary reference and art history-An enchanting and informative voyage * Evening Standard * An enchanting kaleidoscope of ruins from all times, cultures, and places, is full of stimulating juxtapositions * Country Life *