Sir Robert Lorimer, who practised in Edinburgh between 1893 and 1929, was an architect whose deep response to Scotland's landscape and its crafts is expressed as vividly by his letters as by his buildings. He was Scotland's leading architect by 1911 when he received a knighthood for his designs for the Thistle Chapel in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. On original publication, this was the first book for over forty years to deal with the work of Lorimer and the talented group of artists and craftspeople gathered around him.

Dr Peter Savage trained as an architect and town planner and was a graduate of the Universities of Liverpool and Edinburgh. He worked in architects' offices in England and Scotland, and taught in two colleges of art and the Universities of Edinburgh and New Mexico, as well as the Technical College of Nova Scotia.

A general interest in conservation and in garden design led him to Robert Lorimer's work in 1968, and he contributed articles on this subject to a number of journals including Country Life. This study began with Lorimer's drawings and papers and widened to his buildings, gardens and furniture and, finally, to his writings, which reveal so much of the inner feelings of this richly diverse designer.

For the last four decades of his life Dr Savage divided his time between Edinburgh and the Drôme in South East France. He died in 2009.

'A splendid and comprehensive tribute ... Peter Savage is an architect with a feeling for the Scottish landscape that is romantic in the best sense of the word. Just like Lorimer.'
-- Alan Crawford Architectural Journal

'A beautiful book ... No one who has enjoyed any part of Lorimer's work will be disappointed.'
-- Colin McWilliam The Scotsman

'A splendid study of the work of one of Scotland's greatest early 20th century architects ... an outstanding work for the professional or general reader.'
-- Alan Reiach Books in Scotland