Erno Goldfinger championed modern architecture - but there is more to him than concrete, writes Dan Carrier

ERNO Goldfinger earned a reputation of being a man who fought – and thought – fiercely.
When the young architect offended an uptight punter in a Paris nightclub by the suggestive way he was dancing, the pair did not merely trade insults. Erno challenged his critic to a duel – using sabres. The situation was only defused by stream of letters between the two adversaries’ lawyers.
Then there was the case of the James Bond author Ian Fleming using Goldfinger’s surname for his famous villain.
The furious architect took legal action – and made the author add to his book a statement saying Bond’s nemesis had absolutely no likeness to anyone living or dead.
He also took on – and defeated – the great and good of Hampstead when he proposed pulling down four Georgian cottages to create space overlooking Hampstead Heath so he could build his own home.

A tireless campaigner against injustice, the late Paul Foot introduced the vision of Shelley to a new generation writes Paul O’Brien

I FIRST came across the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley in a second-hand Penguin edition that I purchased from a stall in Wandsworth. I was not terribly impressed. In the introduction, the editor, Isobel Quigley informed us that: “No poet better repays cutting; no great poet was ever less worth reading in his entirety.”
Therefore, I assumed that the 70 odd poems and extracts that make up the book must be the best of Shelley and quickly put it aside after a cursory read. The angelic Shelley with his concerns for clouds and skylarks was not for me. Then I read Paul Foot’s Red Shelley, and I was entranced by the story he had to tell.