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Susan Pearce and Theresa Ormrod , Charles Robert Cockerell in the Mediterranean: Letters and Travels, 1810-1817 . Woodbridge : The Boydell Press , 2017. Pp. xii, 330.
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A philhellene who did not much like the Greeks; an apprentice architect who wanted to be a painter; a diplomatic courier who was actually on a lengthy gap year: Charles Robert Cockerell was a confused and ambiguous figure as he set off on his grand tour in 1810. Passing through the dangerous and disputed waters of the Mediterranean, he witnessed the bombardment of Cadiz and would lose some of his letters to French privateers as he headed towards Constantinople. Since the seventeenth century, British architects had been advised to travel through France into Italy to expose themselves to modern architecture. The Napoleonic wars had, however, closed off this opportunity and, with Western Europe inaccessible, Cockerell looked - like others - to the East. An expected three years pursuing fashionable Greek architecture turned into nearly a decade of discoveries. Cockerell would return in 1817 with his reputation made. He had uncovered fabulous new treasures, produced a series of glorious new drawings, and rediscovered the classical principle of entasis - the deliberate distortion of columns to achieve an impression of solidity and strength - which had been lost for centuries. This was only the start of a glittering career that would see him go on to design such major projects as Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and Cambridge's University Library, as well as becoming one of the...