ABSTRACT
After Adam and Chambers, two figures dominate the view of London’s architecture during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: John Soane and John Nash. In contrast to their predecessors, these are recognisably modern figures: no longer amateurs, but quasi professional. However, they practised in a period ZKHQ WKH YRFDWLRQDO ¶GLVLQWHUHVW· WKDW ZDV VXSSRVHG to characterise the twentieth century professional remained a blurred issue in which architecture, art and development were thoroughly intermixed (and to which, to some extent, we have returned). Soane, for example, died in the year the Institute of Architects (founded as a club in 1791) gained its Royal Charter and became the Royal Institute. However, winning this celebrated status at the end of a long history associated with the Rule of 7DVWHDQGDERXW WKH WLPH\RXQJ4XHHQ9LFWRULDFDPH onto the throne was also the beginning of a problematic period in the history of Britain’s architects.
