Very sad news from the other side of the Atlantic of the death of Robin Middleton, a formidable figure in the world of architectural history and, indeed, architecture more widely. He taught me at Cambridge as part of an unlikely double act with David Watkin, introducing us to the world of neo-classicism through his deep knowledge of, and interest in, the theoretical literature of French neoclassicism, beginning with a compulsory first essay on Claude Perrault’s Ordonnance des cinq espèces de colonnes selon la méthode des anciens. He had done his PhD. thesis under Nikolaus Pevsner on ‘Viollet-le-Duc and French Nineteenth-Century Architectural Theory’ in three volumes.

At the time, he was a figure of slight mystery, at least to me. He would appear from London dressed in his snakeskin jacket. I later discovered that he was simultaneously running General Studies at the Architectural Association and was very active in organising lectures and conferences there – probably more active there than he was in Cambridge. Born in South Africa in 1931, he had studied architecture at the University of Witwatersrand where he made friends with Denise Scott Brown (née Lakofski) and her first husband Robert Scott Brown. I remember Denise saying that they had travelled round Europe in 1956 with lists of buildings to see prepared by Robin and one of the best aspects of his teaching was the wonderful printed map he had prepared of all the nineteenth-century buildings to see in Paris. It was my introduction to Paris. I wish I still had a copy.

I hope the RIBA won’t mind if I reproduce the slightly blurry picture of him taken in 1969 by Monica Pidgeon with whom he worked on Architectural Design.