The Irish Times

Few architects have made a greater impact on Dublin than James Gandon, the subject of a new biography by Hugo Duffy. What will strike any reader is how much Gandon's presence in Ireland was a matter of happy chance rather than design. He was almost 40 when he arrived in Dublin, and his career in England before that time had been rather undistinguished, with barely a handful of completed commissions to his name. It is interesting to discover that he was offered the opportunity to work in St Petersburg in 1779, two years before coming to Dublin, but declined.