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Arts feature

Why Christopher Wren died thinking his life had been a failure

Adrian Tinniswood on the fall and rise — and fall and rise — of England’s greatest architect

15 April 2023

9:00 AM

15 April 2023

9:00 AM

When Sir Christopher Wren’s servant went to rouse his master from an afternoon nap on 25 February 1723, and found that the old man would never wake again, the reputation of the nation’s greatest architect was already on the wane. He had walked away from St Paul’s in a fit of pique, with the cathedral still unfinished.

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