Pevsner revisited and Dresser re-assessed
The Buildings of England: Wiltshire
Julian Orbach, Nikolaus Pevsner & Bridget Cherry (Yale University Press, £45)
NIKOLAUS PEVSNER’S aim to bring order and depth to the amateurish world of British architectural writing began when he pitched his idea to Allen Lane of Penguin for a ‘Buildings of England’ series. He produced two guides a year, with his wife, Lola, driving him. The first three guides were published in 1951; the mammoth task ended with Staffordshire in 1974.
His 1963 volume was first revised in 1975 and has now been revised again by Julian Orbach. Pevsner always thought it would be the revised editions that would count, as more information became available and other scholars were involved. With the listing of many late-20th-century structures, such as
