Gaudí: God’s Architect - out June 4, 2026

‘Run over by a tram and mistaken for a tramp, Gaudí met a tragic end but this biography restores him to life as one of the most original architects of all time, emphasising his Catholic faith and exploring his many contradictions: humble but uncompromising, hands-on yet visionary, ascetic in his lifestyle yet extravagantly playful in his designs. Stanford shows how the Catalan genius put his soul into everything he did.’ Blake Morrison

‘Gaudí’s unique architecture is loved by millions, but the man himself has long remained a mystery. Genius or madman? Peter Stanford’s riveting portrait brings together as a compelling whole the triumphs and the tragedies of his life.’ Antonia Fraser

‘In daring to trace the complex connections between Gaudí’s religious faith and his famous buildings, this is such an enriching, nuanced book. There is real sensitivity to the appreciation of buildings that are often contradictory: Catholic and Moorish; curvaceous and symbolic; playful and pious. And the deep analysis of Gaudí's buildings is mirrored by a subtle study of his complex character. He was both penitential but cantankerous, ascetic but stubborn. It’s so much more than the biography of a great architect because it reads like a history of modern Catalunya, a region torn in those decades - like Gaudí himself - between traditionalism and modernism. The whole book seems somehow to capture the spirit of its subject by its beautiful design, with photographs reproduced as "bubbles" rather than rectangles, constantly reminding the reader that the great man was, in some ways, as much a sculptor as he was an architect, always attempting to imitate the natural, rather than the man-made, world.’

This new biography published by Hodder, the first in English for more than two decades, has been five years in the researching and writing, but many more since I first visited La Sagrada Família on a school trip to Barcelona as a sixth-former learning Spanish. There was just something so compelling about this, then, less than half-finished building and the story of the mysterious Gaudí who had imagined it and worked on it for more than four decades. It was the same reaction that continues to draw five million visitors a year to the much more - though not completely - finished basilica today.

Because he left behind so few papers, and preferred making models to drawing plans, you have to work hard to uncover the real Gaudí. One key element is to know his buildings inside out, which is why I have spent time living in Barcelona where almost all of them are located. They yield so many clues to what was going on in his mind at any point. And then you have understand Barcelona, its history, how it was torn apart during the boom-and-bust decades when he was working there. Finally you have to understand his faith, not something he did on Sunday but every minute of every day on his building sites and in his studio, drawing on his religious upbringing, projecting the distinctive Catholic rituals and traditions of Catalunya, and struggling with his own troubled, latterly penitential relationship with God. I hope my own cradle Catholicism and up-and-down relationship with my Church allows me more insight than most into this enigmatic genius as the 100th anniversary of his death is marked on June 10, 2026.

Peter Stanford

About Peter

Peter Stanford is an award-winning British writer, journalist, broadcaster and campaigner, best known for his biographies and books on the history, theology and cultural significance of religious ideas and his work as director of the Longford Trust for prison reform.