Recently I have been reading Rosemary Hill's biography of Pugin, God's Architect. Architectural history has fascinated me since I was a child, but I came comparatively late to an appreciation of Victorian Gothic, possibly because I have lived or worked in Victorian Gothic buildings most of my life. What interests me about Pugin, however, is not just the fine buildings and artefacts for which he was responsible, but his enormous zest for life, his huge capacity for work — the rows, the intrigues, the delight in detail — and above all, perhaps, his conception of the architect as a man divinely appointed, a "steward of the mysteries" no less than the priest at the altar. I wonder whether our contemporary concern with design has lost something now that few would admit to the designer's being anything more than a talented individual. Pugin understood the middle ages in one point very well; the individual is unthinkable without the group and good design must be allied to good workmanship. L'art pour l'art? Not quite, but there is no room for the second-rate in religious art. (No podcast this week as a cold is sweeping through the community and hoarse vocies and sniffles do not make for pleasant listening.)