Ken Worpole

Worpole attended Southend High School for Boys before training as an English teacher at Brighton College of Education between 1965 and 1969. On completing his training moved to Hackney, teaching English at Hackney Downs School from 1969 – 1973.[3] He has been married to the photographer Larraine Worpole since 1965 and they have two children.[4]

On leaving teaching Worpole as an oral historian and publisher for the Centerprise project in Hackney. In 1984 he was appointed Director of the Cultural Industries Unit at the Greater London Enterprise Board,[5] leaving in 1986 when the Greater London Council was abolished. Between 1986 and 1989 he worked as a Policy Adviser to Mark Fisher MP, Shadow Minister for the Arts.[6] Since then he has written or edited some 18 books, contributed chapters to many others, and been responsible for researching and writing a number of influential government and independent public policy reports, including Park Life: Urban Parks & Social Renewal,[7] People, Parks & Cities,[8] 21st Century Libraries[9] and Modern Hospice Design[10]

His study of European cemetery design, Last Landscapes, was chosen as one of the ‘Books of the Year’ by Architects' Journal,[11] The New Statesman,[12] and the Glasgow Sunday Herald;[13] in The Times, books editor Erica Wagner named it as one of her Critic’s Choice of the best six books about death.[14] His study of hospice architecture in the UK, Modern Hospice Design, was the first major study of the hospice movement in Britain from the 1960s onwards, and their influence across the world. In 2015, a reviewer for Town & Country Planning journal wrote that, ‘I’ve been forced to confront a deeper sense of spirituality in a beautiful new book called New Jerusalem: The Good City and the Good Society. It is by the hugely influential architectural critic Ken Worpole and looks as wonderful as it reads.’[15]

Worpole was a founder member of the think-tank, Demos,[16] a member of the UK Government’s Urban Green Spaces Task Force (2001 – 2002), a member of the Expert Panel of the Heritage Lottery Fund (2003 - 2008) and an Adviser to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (2003 – 2008).[17][18][19] In 2006 he was appointed as a Senior Professor at The Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University,[20] retiring in 2011.

• 1999: Honorary Doctorate awarded by Middlesex University.[21]
• 1999: Fellowship research award from the Foundation for Urban & Regional Studies.
• 2012: Fellowship research award from the Leverhulme Trust.[22]

• The Republic of Letters, (edited with Dave Morley), Comedia, 1982
• Dockers & Detectives, Verso Books, 1983, revised edition Five Leaves Books, 2008
• Reading by Numbers, Comedia, 1984
• Death in the City (with Melissa Benn), Canary Books, 1986
• Saturday Night or Sunday Morning? (with Geoff Mulgan), Comedia, 1986
• Towns for People, Open University Press, 1992, reprinted 1993
• Staying Close to the River, Lawrence & Wishart, 1995
• Libraries in a World of Cultural Change, (with Liz Greenhalgh & Charles Landry), UCL Press, 1992
• Richer Futures: fashioning a new politics, (editor Ken Worpole), Earthscan, 1999
• Here Comes the Sun: architecture and public space in 20th century European culture, (with photographer Larraine Worpole), Reaktion, 2001
• Last Landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the West, (with photographer Larraine Worpole), Reaktion, 2003
• 350 Miles: An Essex Journey, (with photographer Jason Orton), Essex County Council, 2005
• Modern Hospice Design, Routledge, 2009
• The New English Landscape, (with photographer Jason Orton), Field Station: London, 2013, reprinted 2015
• Contemporary Library Architecture, Routledge, 2015
• New Jerusalem: The Good City and the Good Society, Swedenborg Society, 2015, reprinted 2017

• www.worpole.net
• The New English Landscape blog