Lutyens and Speer
Sir: Gavin Stamp takes me to task for bracketing the current enthusiasm for Sir Edwin Lutyens with the revival of interest in the works of Speer (21 November). `Tastless and ignorant,' he calls it. Yet the connection is made far more eloquently by one of Mr Stamp's own colleagues on the organising committee for the Lutyens exhibition at the Hayward, Roderick Gradidge. In an article which Mr Stamp curiously omits from his survey of the current round of Lutyens polemic, Mr Gradidge appears to link not just the enthusiasts of both Lutyens and Speer, but the quality of their heroes' work also.
Writing in The Times two weeks ago Mr Gradidge devoted a chunk of his article on Lutyens to a not altogether favourable comparison of Sir Edwin's plans to rebuild London with those of Speer for Berlin. Elsewhere Mr Gradidge makes a similar comparison between Berlin and New Delhi. And in The Times he even goes on to make the interesting claim that Hitler, of all the wartime leaders, had the greatest love for architecture. Ignorant perhaps, tasteless certainly.
Deyan Sudjic
Sunday Times,
200 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1
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