Clough Williams Ellis was a peripheral figure in the world of the bright young things of the 1920s and 30s. A fashionable architect with a busy practice in London, he is best remembered as the designer of the extraordinary folly village of Portmeirion in North Wales, later to be the location of the TV series "The Prisoner". Jonah Jones, a Welsh sculptor, worked with Clough on Portmeirion and in this entertaining biography he describes Clough's life and work, not only at Portmeirion but as far afield as China, with revealing insights into his working methods - which even in old age were decidedly hands-on, hand-gilding the finial of one of his most elaborate creations from a rickety ladder at the age of 75, dressed in his unvarying costume of yellow waistcoat and knee-breeches. Clough's buildings always manage to charm, and so does this book.