The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work.

Written exactly fifty years after the opening of the building in 1964, this first book in the series, Anatomy of a Building, is a meditation on the architecture of the college, focusing particularly on its current home, a Grade 1 listed building, designed by Denys Lasdun.

Rowan Moore is Architecture Critic of The Observer.

He was formerly Director of the Architecture Foundation, Architecture Critic of the Evening Standard and Editor of Blueprintmagazine, and author of Why We Build (2012). His writing has been published in several countries. In 2014 Moore was named Critic of the Year in the UK Press Awards, the first architectural writer to receive this award.