It is not because he receives few commissions that Quinlan Terry should be included among the architects we call underrated — quite the reverse is the case. It is because his work, in common with that of traditional architects, receives little attention from the architectural press, which for the most part reports only Modernist work. Now aged 71 and at work on numerous commissions, his classically inspired work in Britain and the US has included a cathedral, an infirmary, interiors at 10 Downing Street, a library and college court at Cambridge, residential and office buildings, and many country houses and villas. It might be supposed that such an architect would by now have received at least some slight formal recognition for his contribution to the public good. Perhaps it might be too much to expect that he would receive a peerage (never mind the Order of Merit), like those purveyors of heart-warming glass and steel towers, Lord Rogers and Lord Foster. But to have no public recognition at all is hard to understand.

Terry’s Richmond Riverside is a huge ­development, which nonetheless harmonises with local Georgian buildings in both style and scale, proving that you can build in an historic town without wrecking it. As a result of this project, he was invited to build Merchants Square in Colonial Williamsburg, ­Virginia, near the College of William and Mary attributed to Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most revered places of American ­history. Remarkably, he was also called upon to build in the immediate proximity to Wren in London, though this time in the face of opposition, allegedly, from the leading British Modernist architect Lord Rogers. The commission was for a large new infirmary at the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, next to Wren’s ­celebrated buildings of the 1680s. Terry’s ­infirmary features a Tuscan portico, the ­simplest of the classical orders, chosen in deference to Wren’s grander Doric on the main hospital building.