The Sunday Times

The world's most ambitious online Dictionary of Architects has been launched in Scotland. It is the creation of Professor David Walker who, as Chief Inspector of Historic Buildings, has provided Scotland with the most comprehensive list of listed buildings in Europe. When others might have retired, Walker embarked on an online dictionary which now includes more than 6,300 Victorian and early 20th-century architects and practices and 33,769 historic buildings. It also covers the work of many notable Scottish architects who worked in England and overseas. Scottish architects were prolific in Australia, India and Canada, notably in Montreal and British Columbia. The dictionary is remarkable because, like Sir Howard Colvin's groundbreaking Dictionary of English Architects (1660-1840), first published in 1954, it is based not just on secondary sources but on first-hand archival research and, in Walker's case, face-to-face interviews.