Adrian Stokes - aesthete, critic, painter and poet - was born on 27 October 1902 in Radnor Place, Bayswater. A life of patient enquiry produced over twenty critical books and numerous papers; paintings of a mysterious iridescence that, he maintained, "project an armature of the architectural effects that mean everything to me" and in his last years, poetry with a personal, astringent rhythm. A letter to the Times Literary Supplement in 1965, signed by eighteen prominent thinkers and artists - including Coldstream, Moore, Hepworth and Wollheim - claimed Adrian Stokes as amongst "the most original and creative .... writers on art".   continue