Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight

This is the first critical and biographical account of Sir Leslie Martin (1908-2000), one of the leading modern architects of post-war Britain. Martin was perhaps best known for the Royal Festival Hall (1948-1951) as part of the Festival of Britain, and his controversial masterplan to demolish most of Whitehall, London’s historic government district, and replace it with a ziggurat-section megastructure built in concrete (1964-1970). This book traces his career from his wartime work for the London Midland and Scottish Railways, where he designed innovative pre-fab platform buildings, to his work at the London County Council and to his setting up his own practice with Speight. Martin was also a key figure in architectural education. Following some years as the first full-time director of the Hull School of Architecture, he became the first-ever Professor in Architecture at the University of Cambridge and chaired the 1958 Conference, which was fundamental in shaping how architecture was taught thereafter in the UK. The book offers new insights into Martin’s design process and work through the study of previously unpublished archival records and drawings. It also uncovers the crucial role of his wife and architectural partner Sadie Speight, which has previously gone unappreciated. The political and social context in which Martin and Speight lived is vividly depicted, in particular, their circle of talented friends and colleagues, including Nicholson and Hepworth. The book highlights how Speight's key role in the publication of the Circle magazine and The Flat Book was poorly acknowledged was at the time (and until now), and how influential her later work on writing about design for the Architectural Review was.