The Creator

After I first met Jack Diamond, more than forty years ago now, I thought of Howard Roark, the architect protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Diamond didn’t look like Gary Cooper, who played Roark in the 1949 adaptation of the novel, but he was charismatic and he believed, like Rand’s character, that architects could help create a better world — that they could be more than mere functionaries of commerce.

If Context & Content, Diamond’s new memoir, were ever made into a movie, I’d suggest Benedict Cumberbatch for the lead. He could pull off the daunting combination of sexy rugby boy from the wilds of Africa who goes to Oxford, the young man lucky enough to work in important firms, the sketcher and watercolourist, the academic, music lover, magazine editor, social commentator, father, and grandfather, the crusader for better cities, and the internationally famous architect.

I joined Diamond’s office on a contract a couple of years...