We all consume architecture – it’s the one artform we can’t avoid. So it’s hardly surprising that the finest writers have applied their minds to it. Most of them aren’t architects, but their powers of perception are such that what they say gets under the skin of a building – and gives us a lesson in how to look at architecture. You’ll be entertained and enlightened as you find out why Goethe went from being dismissive of Strasbourg Cathedral to being an awed admirer; why Ruskin was offended by decorated shopfronts; why D.H. Lawrence loved Etruscan temples; why Tom Wolfe ridiculed the Seagram Building; why Vita Sackville-West saw Chatsworth as an alien interloper; why Rose Macaulay was passionate about ruins; And what Evelyn Waugh thought of Gaudí. The answers, and plenty more, are all here. Knowing them will transform the way you see buildings and deepen your understanding of architecture.

Stephen Bayley is a critic, columnist, consultant, broadcaster, debater and curator, as well as a prolific author on design and architecture whose books include Design: Intelligence Made Visible and Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything. With Terence Conran he created the V&A Boilerhouse Project, London’s most successful exhibition space during the 1980s and forerunner of the influential Design Museum. Previously art critic of the Listener and architecture critic of the Observer, he is now design critic of The Spectator. He chairs the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust and is Honorary Visiting Professor at Liverpool University School of Architecture.