Sir Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) is now mostly remembered as a genius of architecture – but he was also an accomplished polymath, who only came to architecture quite late in life. Most famous as the mastermind behind the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and more than fifty parish churches after the Great Fire of London, among his countless other projects Wren also designed the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, and much of Hampton Court Palace. Replete with colourful images of his buildings, this concise biography tells the story of a man whose creations are still popular tourist attractions to this day, but also casts light on Wren's credentials as an intellectual and a founding member of the Royal Society.

A biography of Sir Christopher Wren from one of Britain's best writers and historians

"Sir Christopher Wren" is a biography by Lucy Phillimore. He was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710. Excerpt: "The name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul's Cathedral and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great architect's ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most stirring times of our history, in which his family played no inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences."

Everything Sir Christopher Wren undertook, he envisaged on a grander scale -- bigger, better, more enduring than anything that had gone before. A versatile genius who could have pursued a number of brilliant careers with equal virtuosity, he was a mathematical prodigy, an accomplished astronomer, a skillful anatomist, and a founder of the Royal Society. Eventually, he made a career in what he described disparagingly in later life as "Rubbish" -- the architecture, design, and construction of public buildings. Through the prism of Wren's tumultuous life and brilliant intellect, historian Lisa Jardine unfolds the vibrant, extraordinary emerging new world of late-seventeenth-century science and ideas.