Peter Murray started out as an admirer of the SOH's architect Jorn Utzon, thinking, along with many others that he was the tragic hero of this famous building's tale. Uzton, the competition-winning designer who came up with the SOH's unique and iconic form, eventually resigned from the job under pressure from the Australian government, after years of argument and controversy.

Murray has interviewed many of the people involved in the project, and extensively researched the archives, to tell the true tale of how Utzon was appointed and how he eventually fell from grace. For anyone involved in the interface between architects and their clients, or between architects and engineers, it's a very informative tale.

Utzon was something of a megalomaniac, determined to control every aspect of the project down to the last detail. However, he had no experience of building projects on this scale, and little sympathy for the client's need to control costs and meet a programme. He seems very much in the tradition of architect as a romantic artist, a visionary, a genius, but someone almost entirely lacking the organisational and political skills required to actually get anything as complex as the SOH built.

The book paints a very sympathetic portrayal of the building's structural engineers, Arup, who were often the piggy-in-the-middle while the client fought to get Utzon to ever produce any working drawings.

Although the book contradicts other published accounts, it seems well-researched and certainly rings true to me. The writing style is often dry - this certainly isn't a flashy, exaggerated dramatisation of what actually happened. ( )