I went to what may have been the last of the conferences organised to mark the 300th. anniversary of Wren’s death, which only demonstrated that, because of the great length of his professional career, the range of his involvement in important buildings besides St. Paul’s and the City Churches, there is still a vast amount to learn in time for the 400th. anniversary of his birth, for which preparations may already be being made by the Royal Society (they mark births not deaths) in 2032.

The thing which sticks in my mind was from Anthony Geraghty’s opening paper which included an unexpected quote from The Tatler no.52, about an architect Nestor, ‘a skilful Architect, and in a manner the inventor of the use of mechanic powers’. Nestor was apparently bashful and did not know how to blow ‘the trumpet of his own fame’. This was Wren: too modest for his own good, slow in publishing his scientific work in his youth and slow in claiming credit for his great works later on.