AndrewPaulWood

  Reading this review by Olly Wainwright (the Graun ’s design and architecture reviewer apparently), one can’t help be struck by the fact that he apparently he knows nothing first hand of many aspects of European and Islamic architectural history. The book sounds like trash if the review is anything to go by, and his smug preening while discrediting any criticism of the flaws in his review as “white supremacist trolls” suggests a boilerplate ego, but just for kicks I’m going to go through the whole thing and explain why he, and the book’s author Diana Darke (according to Wikipedia, a “Middle East cultural expert, Arabist and occasional BBC broadcaster”, but not as far as I can tell, an architectural historian) are wrong. The text of the original article is in italics. As Notre-Dame cathedral was engulfed by flames last year, thousands bewailed the loss of  this great beacon of western civilisation . The ultimate symbol of French cultural identity, the very heart of the nation, was g