Australia House, officially opened by George V on 3 August 1918, is a substantial Beaux-Arts building on a site formed by the eastern junction of the Strand and Aldwych in London's Westminster district. Construction started in 1913, on the cusp of changes which would affect everything from politics to architecture. On many levels, therefore, Australia House was an expression of its time. It was the first purpose-built set of offices for a British Dominion government in the imperial capital and planned on a generous scale to accommodate not only Australia's high commissioner, but also the representatives of the six Australian states (having already incorporated the building occupied by the Victorian agent-general), the London branch of the Commonwealth Bank and commercial tenants whose rents would cover some of the cost. Eileen Chanin has written a richly textured architectural history which meticulously covers all aspects of the acquisition of the site and the building's conception, design, decoration and construction. It is, however, by no means a narrowly focused study of a single structure. Chanin's guiding principle is that: ‘A great building is a mirror of the society that conceived it…[its] origin and history tell about the era from which it came’ (p. 278). Her study is about Australia's aspiration to create a fitting symbol of its nationhood within the imperial metropolis. But it is equally an account of the efforts of the Victorians and Edwardians to reimagine their own city as that imperial metropolis. In Chanin's book, the two stories converge. Just as importantly, Chanin makes the strong case for reappraising the Edwardian architecture of inner London.

Chanin develops each of her themes with intelligence and lightness of touch. Australia House finally anchored the southern end of the London County Council's (LCC) great Holborn-to-Strand Improvement Scheme. The scheme was the first major project undertaken by the LCC, designed to ease east–west traffic flows along the Strand and create a grand Haussman-like boulevard (Kingsway, opened by Edward VII in 1905) to perform the same function for north–south flows between Holborn and the Strand. Authorized by parliament in 1898, it was also the largest such scheme ever undertaken in London and the most extensive since the construction of Regent Street in 1820. Work began in 1901 and included the clearance of two densely occupied blocks facing the church of St Clement Danes. In place of the latter, a new crescent called Aldwych was built to run into the Strand at either end, creating an island site that covered about half an acre. It is today more or less directly opposite King's College London. But the scheme soon stalled. Developers were reluctant to build because of the LCC's costly restrictions on style and materials. Additional costs were imposed by out-of-date building regulations which made it impossible to take advantage of the economies arising from construction with steel frames. A tramway running under Kingsway to a terminus beneath Aldwych failed. When the Commonwealth of Australia purchased the eastern horn of the Strand island site in April 1912, only two buildings had been erected in that location: the new Gaiety Theatre at the western end of the Aldwych crescent and the offices of the agent-general of Victoria opened in 1909. The size of the plot acquired by Australia and the quality of the structure it proposed to erect finally provided the LCC with a grand public building in accordance with its ambitions for the entire site.

The Holborn-to-Strand Improvement scheme could thus also complete its part in the larger design to make London a visible representation of the imperial idea. The new precinct carved out where Kingsway joined the Strand was easily conceived in these terms. In 1906, the Illustrated London News acclaimed Aldwych as the ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’. In 1913, just as work started on Australia House, a syndicate led by Earl Grey, a former governor of Canada, obtained an option on the remaining vacant portion of the Strand island site for a projected Dominions House which would accommodate the representatives of all the other British Dominions. Grey, as Chanin puts it, ‘was tilting at windmills’ (p. 191), but his proposals were of a piece with the times and the Edwardian striving after possibilities that failed to materialize.

Chanin has chosen a narrative style and an essentially chronological approach. Her book is divided into 6 parts and 22 chapters, bookended by a prologue and epilogue which set out her main arguments. She moves deftly between her different themes and subjects. She encompasses the many influences – imperial, metropolitan, colonial nationalist, professional, architectural and artistic – that marked Australia House as a building and made it a fitting symbol of the aspiration to create an imperial metropolis. There is much also about key personalities – including planners, builders, architects and artists – and other architecturally significant contemporary buildings. The result is a carefully researched, well-crafted and beautifully written book which combines the skills of the historian with those of the art critic.