Giles Worsley

[Paul Clerkin]

Giles Worsley, who died on Tuesday aged 44, enjoyed a distinguished career as an architectural historian and critic, most recently for this newspaper, which he joined as architectural correspondent in 1998.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/19/db1901.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/19/ixportal.html

[Gabion]

From Hugh: Giles was a good open-minded critic, enthusiastic and good company. The obit says he could seem patrician and aloof, but I never found him to be like that. He wore his aristocrratic upbringing lightly: it was never mentioned, and certainly never an issue. Although we all knew he had terminal cancer, his death was still very upsetting. He had been working, even visiting buildings overseas, right up to Christmas.

Best Giles memory: a party of us were in a little bus tooling along an autobahn to Osnabruck to see Daniel Libeskind's first completed building. The bus was hot and Giles decided he needed air. Spying what he thought was a vent in the roof, he jumped up and yanked it open. This turned out to be the emergency escape hatch which flew into the air and went bouncing off down the autobahn behind us, cars weaving to avoid it. No casualties, luckily.

Very occasionally Giles got a bit bumptious in conversation. All you had to do was mention the Osnabruck bus, and he'd go very quiet.

[Paul Clerkin]

LOL.... nice story, very young death