Sir – Leonard Blavatnik is man enough not to be deflected from trust in his architects by Mr Hornby’s playful jibes (Letters, April 18). It seems that the latter’s utterly appropriate reaction to the Port Meadow fiasco has so fired his humours for him to strike out at any target he can espy. A pity!


Ageing, yet eager for quality architecture in Oxford, I have felt it right, via Google, to attempt to gauge Mr Hornby’s design exemplars, as cited in his letter, for a building in Walton Street on the School of Government site.


His first exemplar, however, ‘Minster Tower EC3’, appears not to exist. ‘Minster Court EC3’ is an 18-storey office block — apparently of “interesting but provocative design” — probably not Mr Hornby’s favoured one. And ‘Minster Exchange EC3’ is a restaurant. Most likely candidate is ‘Minster House EC3R 7AE’. Is this it? — a modest (for EC3) 8-storey building, facings of stone and brick, presenting an abrupt but polite four-storey face to Fenchurch Street — seemly, but of real bulk, and with the faint, faint Georgian overtones. What’s to inspire?


Mr Hornby’s second exemplar is the Cambridge Judge Business School — Old Addenbrookes Hospital, facing Trumpington Street, revamped and extended by John Outram, architect (view www. johnoutram. com/judgemenu — and savour his commentary!). The Judge has a lengthy and lofty four-storey frontage. with a touch of Victorian Italianate. Central symmetry apart, there is little classical about it.


Outram’s architecture, as he himself rightly claims, is some of the most inventive, yet strangely, personal in this country over the last 40 years, often highly polychromatic, more often ‘Sumerian’ than classical.


Difficult then to discern wherein Mr Hornby’s design allegiances lie. I feel confident Mr Blavatnik will remain untempted by Mr Hornby’s ‘apparent’ tastes in architecture.
John Barrow, Headington