He survived family tragedy and childhood illness to become one of the founders of York University. Now the outspoken architect Patrick Nuttgens, right, has written his remarkable life story. He spoke to CHRIS TITLEY.

WHERE to begin with Professor Patrick Nuttgens? Perhaps in 1962 when the architect and educator came to York to help found the university. Or after that when he established Leeds Polytechnic. Or later still when he helped turned York Theatre Royal's fortunes around, as its chairman.

Maybe we might kickoff with those wickedly frank assessments of York's planners that helped to halt the destruction of the city's historic core.

Alternatively, his career as radio and television presenter, his written works - which now include a modestly slim volume of memoirs - and his spiky newspaper columns would make an eye-catching introduction.

Then again, we could launch into his standing as a family man extraordinaire. How else could you describe someone with a 46-year-old marriage and nine - yes, nine - kids?

That's the trouble with polymaths. You don't know where to start.

So we are probably best rewinding the Nuttgens story to its origin. After all, his childhood was as remarkable as the adult life that followed.

He was born in the Chiltern Hills, west of London, 70 years ago, the third of 12 children in a Catholic family. His father, Prof Nuttgens says, was "a quite exceptional character" who designed and made stained glass windows. He was born in Germany; and, although he only lived there for three years and could not speak German, at the start of the First World War Mr Nuttgens senior was arrested, paraded on an open-top bus and stoned by passers-by.

He spent a year in a prison camp. When asked about this injustice, he commented: "That's the way it is". This indefatigable outlook was inherited by Professor Nuttgens, who possesses a similarly stubborn streak of cheerfulness.

Prof Nuttgens' mother, a brilliant mathematician from Ireland, was also no stranger to aggression. She became an enthusiastic republican and was once marched out of her home by the Black and Tans with a pistol in her back. Later her father persuaded her to go to England for her own safety.

The security of Prof Nuttgens' childhood was first shaken when he was sent away to boarding school aged seven, "a devastating experience at that age and one to which I have never subjected my own children," he writes in The Art of Learning, his memoir.

Devastation soon turned to tragedy. In the December of his first term his mother died. Prof Nuttgens remembers the day he and brother Michael were told the news by the headmaster. "She is dead," he told them. "Her soul has gone to heaven. You will never see her again."

He led them to the chapel to say a prayer. Then he gave them the rest of the morning off.

The brothers did not attend the funeral and "when we got home at the end of our first term, the only difference was that Mummy was not there". Prof Nuttgens says he only began to come to terms with the tragedy in his early 30s after coming to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Five years after his mother's death, disaster struck again. Walking off the school rugby pitch after a match captaining the junior XV, the young Patrick suffered a terrible pain in his back. Within a day he was paralysed from the chest down. Much later he was told he had contracted polio. He was confined to an open-air hospital for two years, listening to the bombs falling on London at night. There, he learnt to walk again, although he never fully recovered.

A precociously talented child, he excelled at all academic subjects and could have read practically anything at Cambridge University. But he had set his heart on being an architect. He studied the subject at Edinburgh and later taught architecture there. He also met and married his wife Biddy in the city.

By the time the couple moved to York in 1962, they had four children. Prof Nuttgens first fell in love with York when he visited with his father as a child. Now he was one of the first three academics appointed to the embryonic York University.

He was made director of the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies and charged with helping to found the new university. It is a time he looks back on with fondness and pride.

"From three people, of whom I was one, to about 3,000 when I left to about 8,000 now to more in the future... To start a real university and work out what a university was really about, the academic disciplines, the community and everything else that comes with it, it's a wonderful experience.

"We started it as a teaching university and it was absolutely wonderful. I have no regrets about that at all."

It was during his time at the university that he made local and national headlines by attacking York planning policy. He resigned from the Architects Advisory Committee in protest at the modern developments that were being approved. In 1968, Lord Esher's report put forward the case for conserving York but some at the council had doubts. Prof Nuttgens did not mince his words.

"The town council of York is a group of long-haired, way-out, rebellious and aggressive cranks," he wrote in the Yorkshire Architect journal in 1969.

"In the Sixties, what I was saying was the planners were really trying to make York into a modern city," said Prof Nuttgens at his cottage in Terrington.

He was a key member of the movement that replaced the craving for development with a desire to conserve - although his critical tongue has never been silenced. In the current debate over Coppergate Riverside he is rooted firmly in the "no" camp, calling the design of the shopping centre "unspeakably bad".

At the end of the Sixties it was announced that York University was not to get an undergraduate school of architecture as promised. That was a bitter blow. Prof Nuttgens left to set up Leeds Polytechnic, now Leeds Metropolitan University. This is, he says, his greatest achievement.

Although a long time retired, Prof Nuttgens is still very active. He swims regularly at Ampleforth College. He is writing more books, including a new history of York. And there may be an accompanying volume to his new memoir, The Art of Learning. That weighs in at a restrained 179 pages.

Academic triumphs and private tragedies tumble into one another as you read. Although robustly optimistic by nature, he has contemplated suicide on three occasions. The last time, reveals the wheelchair-bound professor, was when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, just when his polio was getting worse. He believed he would become a burden on his large family.

The family, in fact, are rarely mentioned, although it is clear he is devoted to Biddy, his eight natural children and one foster child, all now grown up. Among the many sketches and watercolours used to illustrate the book - Prof Nuttgens is a talented artist - are portraits of them all.

Asked how he coped with family life on top of such a hectic career, he first pays tribute to Biddy. Then he adds: "I am a particularly good delegater." Just one more skill to add to the long list.

u The Art of Learning by Prof Patrick Nuttgens is published by the Book Guild, at £14.95