This little book with the lengthy title The Magic Stove: Barry, Soyer and The Reform Club or How a Great Chef Helped to Create Great Building explores the architecture and technology of the London Reform Club building (1837-1840), a noted but generally misinterpreted work of Charles Barry, Britain’s most famous unknown nineteenth-century architect. Barry’s fame rests mainly on two over-familiar monuments: the Houses of Parliament and Highclere Castle, the decor of television drama Downton...