Best Architectural History Book Award for Anthony Geraghty

Posted on 26 November 2014

Anthony Geraghty has been awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion for best architectural history book by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).

Anthony's book, The Sheldonian Theatre: Architecture and Learning in Seventeenth-Century Oxford, published by Yale University Press, drew warm priase from the judges.

Professor Maurice Howard said "This outstanding book makes a significant contribution to British architectural history. It is ostensibly a monograph on a single building, albeit one of immense symbolic significance, and by drawing on a very wide base of knowledge about the early Restoration era, it shows a fundamental understanding of the architect’s mind at this point, the use of drawings to arrive at the final design, the practicalities of getting the structure up, and everything one could expect about the processes of intention... The author writes lucidly, and directly tackles the question of what the relationship is between meaning and form. His approach is fresh and we think will prove to be of lasting significance; Anthony will go on to situate this work in his wider experience of Wren and the late seventeenth century. The book itself benefits from the usual Yale assets of elegant design and good images.'

Anthony commented, "I am thrilled, delighted, and very grateful for this award. It is especially gratifying to be recognised by my fellow architectural historians, and by this Society in particular."