Even his friends acknowledge that the real Goldfinger could be something of a bully – albeit a charming one.
Ernö Goldfinger's Balfron Tower, St Leonard's Road, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E1
But he was no villain.
Ernö Goldfinger's 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, Camden, NW3
Indeed he emerging as a hero of modernist architecture despite being described as being ‘no more than a pimple on the rump of Wren’ by Brian Sewell…
Ernö Goldfinger's 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, Camden, NW3
…and one of his best-known buildings, Trellick Tower, being disparaged by Roger Scruton as embodying a ‘contemptuous conception of life’s value’.
Ernö Goldfinger's 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, Camden, NW3
Though Sewell and Scruton might find support from Prince Charles (in later years Goldfinger kept a caricature of Prince Charles pinned to the wall of his study)…
Ernö Goldfinger's 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, Camden, NW3
…most of those who have lived in a building designed by Goldfinger know that his success as an architect goes far beyond creating external forms which are pleasing (or, to some, repellent) to the eye of architectural historians.
Ernö Goldfinger's Trellick Tower, Golborne Road, North Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, W10
From Nigel Warburton’s Ernö Goldfinger: The Life of an Architect (2003)
