Oxford Libraries Architecture

Reviews / Votes

This book is full of magic. -- Richard Lofthouse * Off the Shelf * THIS is a sumptuous book, full of insight and lavishly illustrated with brilliantly evocative photographs by Dan Paton. I have rarely seen library interiors, usually fusty, brown shadowed places, look so fresh and engaging.

Geoffrey Tyack's text, as one would expect from an Oxford academic, is meticulous in its scholarship, but effortlessly accessible, with passages of delight in the buildings he is describing. -- Timothy Mowl [Geoffrey] Tyack is today the leading authority on [Oxford] city's architecture...he approaches

these libraries as an historian rather than a critic, expertly guiding the reader through stories that

are far more complicated than he makes them seem. -- William Aslet * Timeless temples of the written word * ...this is a book of both words and images,

and Tyack's lucid prose finds a match in Paton's magnificent

photography. Artfully composed so as to show the

stained oak shelves of older examples and the whitewashed

walls of the modern to their best advantage, Paton's

photographs bring vividly to life spaces that are in

many cases completely inaccessible to tourists. -- William Aslet * Timeless temples of the written word * Gorgeously produced by the Bodleian's own imprint, this celebration of some of the country's most beautiful repositories of learning will...make a handsome addition to any library shelf. -- William Aslet * Timeless temples of the written word * ...a rewarding look and read, a fitting tribute to the architectural splendour of Oxford's libraries but also a genuine contribution to library history there. We will enjoy it and learn from it. -- Jeremy Knight * Book Reviews *