I have been reading Christine Casey’s exemplary new book, Architecture and Artifice: The Crafted Surface in Eighteenth-Century Building Practice which has just been published by the Paul Mellon Centre. It brilliantly explores the role of the craftsmen who worked under the architects, how they were instructed, how much autonomy they were allowed in the details of construction, and how much the quality of early eighteenth-century buildings lies not in the overall design, but their surface quality. Not surprisingly, she uses both Castle Howard and Blenheim as examples where the interaction between Vanbrugh as architect and the host of highly skilled builders, tradesmen, stone carvers and carpenters is relatively well documented and states correctly that, in my monograph on Castle Howard, I did not do enough to explore the role of a craftsman like Henri Nadauld who was responsible for the amazing carved capitals in the Great Hall. It’s a very good book and may encourage others to explore these questions which have been relatively neglected because of the focus of architectural historians on the agency of the architect.