Born in London in 1910, Hugh Maxwell Casson was a celebrated British architect, artist and interior designer, who was also active as a writer and broadcaster on twentieth-century design. He was successful across all these fields, and his career culminated in his tenure as President of the Royal Academy from 1976 to 1984.
He was educated at Cambridge, the Bartlett School of Architecture and the British School at Athens, before writing and teaching on the subject of modern architecture in the years leading up to the Second World War. In the war years, he worked for the Camouflage Service of the Air Ministry.
After the war, he was active in championing innovative younger architects. Casson was also friendly with the Royal Family, designing interiors at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Despite his other interests, he was always most active in the field of architecture, a preoccupation that is reflected in his highly accomplished watercolours, which often take buildings as their main subjects.
