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The scarlet-coated Chelsea Pensioners are recognised and held in great affection throughout the world. This first ever single-volume book tells their story and also that of the hospital building - one of the architectural wonders of London.
Veterans of the army have found peace in retirement for over 300 years in this building commissioned by King Charles II and originally designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Although Robert Adam and Sir John Soane later made additions and alterations. The Royal Hospital is very much a living community, and still home to more than 300 ex-soldiers.
This beautifully illustrated book talks about Wren and his particular influential style of architecture, about the benevolent Sir Stephen Fox and the devious Lord Ranelagh, and about the life of the Pensioners on the Long Wards, and in the Great Hall and the Chapel. The author also gives a vivid account of some of the more frivolous aspects of 18th century Chelsea that contrast with the tribulations of the 19th century and the structural damage caused by the wars of the 20th.
The author, Dan Cruickshank, is a senior academic and widely published author in the fields of architecture and social history including Life in the Georgian City and Invasion: Defending Britain from Attack. To a wider public he is known for such television programmes as Marvels of the Modern Age, One Foot in the Past, The House Detectives and the Best of British Buildings. He presented the much-acclaimed Dan Cruickshank Under Fire, which looked at the fate of culture in war zones and featured Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and The Rebuilding of New York’s Ground Zero.
"We have a book of which we can be justifiably proud." Major General J.M.F.C. Hall CB OBE, Royal Hospital Chelsea
"....a superb book and a fitting tribute to the Veterans, the staff who work there and to Sir Christopher Wren's influential style of architecture." The Guards Magazine
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