HERBERT BAKER IN SOUTH AFRICA

First Edition: 276 pages, frontispiece portrait, 9 plans, 97 plates, black vynide, a very good copy in worn dust jacket.

Number 1706 of an edition limited to 2000 copies.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30547): 

'Baker, Sir Herbert (1862–1946), architect and author, was born on 9 June 1862 at Owletts, Cobham, Kent, the fourth of the eleven children of Thomas Henry Baker (1824–1904), gentleman farmer and JP, and his wife, Frances Georgina (d. 1916), daughter of William Davis of Rochester. After a rural childhood at Owletts and a public school education, Baker trained as an architect in London before embarking on one of the great imperial careers in British architecture. He designed major government buildings in South Africa, India, Rhodesia, and Kenya, as well as imperial works in London and Oxford. Baker was also an accomplished domestic architect, the designer of several war memorials, and the rebuilder of the Bank of England. A literary man, Baker produced grand-manner classicism at the core and on the periphery of the British empire during the sunset decades of that architectural tradition and political era.'