Ken Worpole

Ken Worpole (born 1944) is a writer and social historian whose many books include works of literary criticism, architectural history, and landscape aesthetics, and was one of the editors of the 2001 United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) report, The State of the World’s Cities.

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.

Worpole attended Southend High School for Boys before training as an English teacher at Brighton College of Education between 1965 and 1969.

He has been married to the photographer Larraine Worpole since 1965 and they have two children.

On leaving teaching Worpole worked as an oral historian and publisher for the Centerprise project in Hackney.

On completing his training, he moved to Hackney, teaching English at Hackney Downs School from 1969 to 1973.

In 1984 he was appointed Director of the Cultural Industries Unit at the Greater London Enterprise Board, 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.

Worpole was a founder member of the think-tank, Demos, 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).

In 2005 The Independent newspaper stated that: ‘For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape.’ In 2014 ICON Review similarly observed that ‘For well over 40 years Ken Worpole has been one of the most eloquent and forward thinking writers in Britain.’

In 2006 he was appointed as a Senior Professor at The Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University, retiring in 2011.

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.’ In July 2021, the editor of The New Statesman wrote: ‘Worpole is a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition.’

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, People, Parks & Cities, 21st Century Libraries and Modern Hospice Design.

His study of European cemetery design, Last Landscapes, was chosen as one of the ‘Books of the Year’ by Architects' Journal, The New Statesman, and the Glasgow Sunday Herald; in The Times, books editor Erica Wagner named it as one of her Critic’s Choice of the best six books about death.