” Barcelona is an attempt at total history: Social, political, cultural, economic  Hughes
Includes:: descriptions of buildings
- & he is as good on the bony grandeur of Catalan gothic as he is on the bulbous undulations of Gaudi
- analyses of poems, precise evocations of social conditions  & accounts of extraordinary people  His book abounds in virtuoso stylistic displays, impassioned, eloquent, delighted, angry, amused. There is an invigorating freshness & independence of judgement, an absence of clichés, an enlivening curiosity”
- Patrick Taylor-Martin, Literary Review / ” Robert Hughes is probably the best
- & certainly the most accessible
- art critic in the world  in Barcelona his art-historical & his sociological talents converge in what is often a dazzling collage of Catalan peculiarities”
- Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times