Paul Hereford Oliver MBE (25 May 1927 – 15 August 2017) was an English architectural historian and writer on the blues and other forms of African-American music.

[5][6] He initially trained as a painter and sculptor,[7] but because of allergies to some art materials concentrated on graphic design.

[8] After a period in the War Office, Oliver gained his Art Teacher's Diploma at Goldsmiths College at the University of London.

[4] From the early 1960s, he studied vernacular architecture traditions around the world,[10] particularly stimulated by a trip to Ghana in 1964 to research appropriate housing for people displaced after the building of the Akosombo Dam.

[13] Oliver was a leading authority on the blues and gospel music, described in the New York Times as "a scrupulous researcher with a fluent writing style, [who] opened the eyes of readers in Britain and the United States to a musical form that had been overlooked and often belittled.

[15] He made several trips to the US in the 1960s to interview and record blues musicians, financed by the State Department and the BBC.

[3] Oliver died from complications of dementia at a care home in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, on 15 August 2017.