I freely confess that I use my blog as an aid to memory, so have spent the first part of Christmas morning reconsidering 2024.

These are some of my highlights:-

The completion of Pevsner, Series 2

Pevsner, Series 1 was a remarkable achievement, mostly of one man, but with a willing band of supporters, one of whom, John Newman, took over as editor of the second series, but did not live to see it completed. Series 2 is as great an achievement of a slightly different order: meticulous updating, broadening the range, a monument to patience by its two editors, Simon Bradley, Charles O’Brien and since 2015, its copy-editor, Linda McQueen. One of the heroes of Series 2 was John Nicoll, the former Director of Yale University Press in London who took it under the wing of the press and ensured that it continued to be produced to the highest standards.

19, Princelet Street

The Spitalfields Trust has managed to reacquire the management of the synagogue in Princelet Street which it originally acquired in 1981 and then leased: it’s a deeply evocative survival of the different layers of Spitalfields’s history.

The Kunstsilo

An incredibly impressive conversion of an old grain silo in a small holiday resort in south Norway into an internationally significant museum to display post-war Norwegian art.

Santiago de Compostela

So well preserved, so much to see.

The Royal Academy Schools

The Royal Academy Schools have now been added to David Chipperfield’s intelligent and sensitive renovation of the building as a whole in 2018: beautifully done. He’s been working on the project since 2008. So has Julian Harrap. They are a remarkable double act.

Sezincote

The Garden Museum has provided a multitude of pleasures during the year – talks, events, book launches, exhibitions – but few to match its annual literary festival, held this year at Sezincote:-

Grimsthorpe

I have been to Grimsthorpe before, but had forgotten how extraordinarily impressive it is, seen first from a distance across the fields of south Lincolnshire, then close-up, how unorthodox it is with its unexpectedly diminutive facade sandwiched between two monumental towers, and how beautifully well preserved.

Romilly Saumarez Smith/Edmund de Waal

Romilly’s first exhibition was in Edmund de Waal’s studio in West Norwood. He invited her to show her more recent work in early July, an act of the greatest generosity, particularly because he helped so much with the layout and display.

The Warburg Institute

The reconfiguring and addition of a lecture theatre in the courtyard of the Warburg Institute was a monument to intelligent architectural tact, keeping its original spirit of intellectual austerity, but making it a touch more user friendly, a brilliant achievement of Bill Sherman, its director.