The article that I wrote on Pevsner for The Critic has appeared online much faster than I expected (see below). The article was full of a sense of anxiety that somehow the series was coming to an end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
But I have been reassured, first, that matters are in hand for the celebration of the publication of Staffordshire in June to mark the successful completion of a great monument of architectural scholarship; and, second, that plans are indeed afoot to put it online as seems the obvious next step to keep it alive.
The issue, of course, is going to be funding. So, it is perhaps worth recording that Pevsner himself made no money from the series. Nor did Allen Lane. Student assistants were expected to pay for their own food and accommodation as they drove Pevsner round the countryside. Pevsner himself was deeply frugal. So, it is a monument as much as anything else to the high-minded intellectual austerity of the 1950s, with financial support from the Leverhulme Trust and Arthur Guinness when it looked as if the series might come to an end in 1954.
Let’s hope there is a philanthropic organisation which can enable it to survive into its third age.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 