Patricia Spencer-Silver

This picture shows the author and her husband in Iraq in 1970 with the Hindia barrage, built by her grandfather, behind them. The huge work, illustrated on pages 176-7 of the book, saved the river of Babylon from extinction. This is Patricia Spencer-Silver's second book. Her first, Pugin's Builder, the Life and Work of George Myers, was published in 1993 at the time of the great Pugin exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is now working on a second edition of this book; she has written articles for learned journals, two entires for the new Dictionary of National Biography and is also working on an entry for Jackson in the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers. Patricia, a descendant of both George Myers and Sir John Jackson, joined the Construction History Society in the mid 1980s, sat on the Society's committee for several years and participated in visits and conferences. She travelled widely with her late husband, Professor Peter Spencer- Silver, in connection with his academic career. Her travels included visits to the Middle East, on one of which she visited the mighty Hindia barrage.