Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723

The skyline of the city of London in 1973 is very different from what it was when, exactly two hundred and fifty years ago, the body of Sir Christopher Wren was carried to its simple tomb beneath the dome of St Paul’s. It is even very different from what it was in the late forties when the undecorated boredom of modern 'vertical features’ in ferro-concrete first began to challenge Wren’s cathedral and his surviving City churches. Today, new pedestrian precincts girdle a renovated St Paul’s; there is a new London Bridge under construction; the complex of new urban tower blocks approaches completion; and at last most of the Wren architecture that survived the second Great Fire of London is ably and respectfully restored. This is, therefore, an appropriate moment to reassess the life and work of the man whose elegant variety of invention still holds pride of place amid so much undistinguished anonymity. What manner of man was Wren, what was his background and what was his life’s work?