The Real Goldfinger

There are a number of myths in circulation about how Ian Fleming came to name his villain 'Goldfinger'. Read this extract from my biography of the architect Ernö Goldfinger for the true story of the origin of the name. There is an article from The Guardian on the same topic here.  I've lived in two buildings Goldfinger designed, and spent a lot of time in his own house 2 Willow Road in Hampstead (a museum owned by the National Trust), so have a particular angle on his architecture: I was delighted to discover in researching the book that Goldfinger had published theoretical papers in which he argued that architecture as an art needs to be expeienced from within, that it is an art of enclosing space in ways that consciously and often unconsciously affect the person within the enclosed space. More about Erno Goldfinger including pictures of some of his buildings on the Design Museum website.

Some reviews of the book:

Gillian Darley in London Review of Books

Louis Barfe in The Literary Review

Hugh Pearman in The Sunday Times

Joe Moran in The New Statesman

John Avery in The Hungarian Quarterly

Dan Carrier Camden New Journal