Imperial Gothic

  • May 21, 2013
Imperial Gothic

Alex Bremner has just published his book on the Gothic revival movement in architecture and its impact around the world.

A groundbreaking book on the global reach and influence of the Gothic Revival movement in architecture and its close links with 18th- and 19th-century British cultural politics has been published by a Gates Cambridge alumnus.

In his new book Imperial Gothic, Alex [George] Bremner, now a senior lecturer in architectural history at the University of Edinburgh, talks about how, by the middle of the 19th century, the movement had been transformed by architects and theorists into a serious scholarly endeavour, connecting it to notions of propriety and 'truth', particularly in the domain of religious architecture.

Alex writes about how these developments coincided with the continued expansion of Britain’s empire, including a renewed urgency by the English Church to extend its mission beyond the British Isles. Through his focus on religious buildings, he examines the reinvigoration of the Church of England’s colonial and missionary agenda and its relationship to the rise of Anglican ecclesiology, revealing the nature and extent of building activity that occurred across the British world.

Alex [2001] was in the first intake of Gates scholars in 2001 and helped to set up the Gates Scholars' Alumni Association. He did a PhD in the history and theory of Victorian architecture at Cambridge and was the first ever Gates scholar to be awarded a PhD. His thesis focused on London as an imperial city during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how imperial power was expressed through architecture and urban environments. He says his research led to an interest in understanding the role that religion played in constructing colonial identity.

*G. A. Bremner, Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, c.1840-1870 is published by Yale University Press, 2013.
 

Latest News

Inclusive conservation

Rohini Chaturvedi finished her PhD at a difficult time for many students – in the midst of the global economic crisis of the early 2010s. But through a combination of hard work, initiative and serendipity she has found an impressive way to extend the work she did at Cambridge to promote conservation efforts in India. […]

Research impact award for Gates Cambridge Scholar

A Gates Cambridge Scholar is one of two winners of the 2023 Sandra Dawson Research Impact Award for his work on the economics of climate change earlier this month. The annual award was established through a generous donation from Professor Dame Sandra Dawson, a former Director of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Winners are chosen based […]

AI system self-organises to resemble brains of complex organisms

A team of Cambridge scientists, co-led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar, have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order […]

Scholar wins history of science & medicine essay prize

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won a prestigious essay competition about the history of early science with a treatise on evidence of knowledge exchange between the Ming-Chinese and Iberian conventions in the 16th century. The essay competition was run by the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society and the Early Science and Medicine journal […]