Stephanie Williams
Writer. Â Author. Â Journalist
I have been lucky to have been writing books for most of my life. Each one has taken an astonishingly long time -- researching, mulling, getting the facts right. Each is on a wildly different topic: I like to follow my curiosity. From my recent memoir of life as a student in the United States during the turbulent years of the late 1960s, through British colonial history, to the Russian Revolution in Siberia and the building of Lord Norman Foster's early masterpiece,
I hope you will find something to enjoy here.
The Education of Girls is a memoir, an unapologetic, unfiltered chronicle of how Wellesley, a small women's college in Massachusetts became a engulfed in a social revolution.
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What did it take to govern a colony of the British Empire as it rose to its height in the late 19th century? Here are revealed the day-to-day lives, obsessions, griefs and triumphs of ordinary men attempting to order wildly different territories around the globe.
From the comfort of her family to the terror of revolution and dangerous journeys into exile, the story of my Russian grandmother is an epic tale: the dramatic and poignant story of an ordinary woman of exceptional resilience caught up in some of the most devastating events of the last century.
​Docklands remains a rare critical guide to the buildings, old and new, in this unique, and hugely changed area of East London.
A rare book in the annals of architecture: the inside story of the design and construction of the headquarters the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation by Lord Norman Foster. How did he create this early masterpiece? The huge gamble that defined the later trajectory of his extraordinary career.
Hongkong Bank
Jonathan Cape (UK) and Little Brown (USA) 1989
‘Rich drama and suspense... scrupulously objective. You feel at the end of the book that you have helped to build the pyramids, not just another bank.’ Colin Amery, Financial Times. ‘Foster Associates ‘Hongkong and Shanghai Bank is stunning, even awe-inspiring as an object, but Williams’ ‘warts and all’ account of how it was created is easily its match.’ Patrick Hannay, Architects Journal. ‘Nothing can compete with Stephanie Williams’ racy description through all the trial and tribulations of designing and building... as gripping as a detective novel.’ John Winter, Architectural Review.
Docklands
Phaidon 1993
London’s Docklands was undergoing one of the biggest urban renewal programmes in the world when this guide to the buildings of the area was published in 1993. The gigantic developments at Canary Wharf had only just begun to loom over the run-down riverside areas of east London. ‘Docklands’ remains a rare critical guide to the buildings, old and new, in this unique area of London. Providing visitors with both the historical context and a view of the future, it documents – with maps, plans and photographs – the monuments of high-pressure development.