Pevsner

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About Pevsner

For photographs of places connected with Nikolaus Pevsner or featured in the Pevsner Architectural Guides. www.pevsner.co.uk/

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Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a remarkable man. He was born in Germany and studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt/Main, before teaching at the University of Gottingen. Because of his Jewish background he had to step down from his teaching post in 1933, and shortly afterwards moved to England.

With the help of Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, he wrote his 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951-74), one of the great achievements of 20th century art scholarship.

He had a country retreat in a cottage in Wiltshire, previously the home of Geoffrey Grigson, and on his death was buried in the nearby church in Clyffe Pypard.

"A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. Nearly everything that encloses space on a scale sufficient for a human being to move in is a building; the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal." From An Outline of European Architecture, 1943.