For Sir John Soane, the tools of the trade included skylights, tinted glasses and mirrors, as much as classical motifs, bricks and mortar. Carla Passino retraces the life of the man who chased the poetry of architecture and left an extraordinary gift to the nation
Apollo gleams, bathed in golden light. The glow that sets him apart from the hieratic Egyptian gods, debauched Roman revellers and fragments of mosaics that encrust nearly every surface of the Sir John…