Sitting in the library of the Paul Mellon Centre this afternoon, Joshua Mardell asked if I would be interested in a poster drawn by Gavin Stamp advertising a series of lectures on ‘Best Buildings’ due to be held at the Architectural Association in Autumn 1983 and Spring 1984.

Indeed I was, not least because the first lecture in the series was by me. 

I had never seen the poster, but remember the occasion well.  The lectures were organised by Robin Middleton, then head of general studies at the AA, as well as librarian in the Department of History of Art at Cambridge.  They were unpaid, but included dinner afterwards at the Neal Street Restaurant, then über-fashionable; and it was nearly the only time I met the late Andrew Saint.  The lecture was going to be published in AA Files, but for some reason wasn’t. 

I would like to have heard Roger Scruton on Chiswick Power Station.

The lectures were thought to represent a shift in intellectual interests from the nineteenth century to the eighteenth, although this is scarcely evident in the overall choice of subjects.

GMS/6/1, Best Buildings lecture series poster, advertising lecture series held at the Architectural Association, 1983, Gavin Stamp Archive, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.