Melbourne architect Neil Clerehan counts among Australia’s living treasures. A practising architect for sixty years and documenter of the story of the city and its architecture, he holds more knowledge of who built what and how, and against what odds, than anyone else in town. He has written knowledgably, elegantly and consistently on architecture. As Philip Goad writes in his foreword to this book:

In Australia, there has been no one who has continued to write in the popular press in the way that Clerehan has, especially most recently, where he has been able to recall – always with the brevity and wicked humour of a Waugh or a Wilde – the zenith and nadir of professional and popular taste of successive generations.