The first full modern biography of Pugin, the great architect and designer, inventor of the Gothic Revival in England and revealed as the designer of Big Ben and much of the Houses of Parliament. His life story is a remarkable one: by the age of 21 he had been shipwrecked, bankrupted and widowed; before he was 30 he had designed 22 churches, 3 cathedrals, some extraordinary houses and a Cistercian monastery; at 40, insane and disillusioned, he was dead. This debut biography is based on 10 years' painstaking research and has garnered some outstanding pre-publication quotes. 'An altogether outstanding biographical and historical work' Claire Tomalin.