I have just received an advance copy of David Cannadine’s festschrift – Institutions, Individuals and Modern British History, edited by Jonathan Parry and published by The Boydell Press.

https://share.google/ljAFCPMTAclRMiC7n

I have only had time so far to read Parry’s introductory account of Cannadine’s remarkable career. Parry implies that Cannadine modelled himself on the career of Jack Plumb, the worldly Master of Christ’s who must have helped to get him elected to a fellowship at Christ’s when he was appointed in 1977 to an Assistant Lectureship in British eighteenth-century history, an interesting appointment for someone whose PhD was on late nineteenth-century landownership. Possibly. But at that stage of Cannadine’s career, he seemed more influenced, as Parry also makes clear, by the work of Lawrence Stone at Princeton and H.J. Dyos at Leicester; and, as it happens, I think of Linda Colley, Cannadine’s wife, as more obviously a product of the Plumb school having done her PhD under him on the early eighteenth-century Tory party.

Anyway, the book is a rich feast for anyone who is interested, as I am, in the relationship between individuals and institutions and it includes essays on two other Cambridge historians – Noel Annan, author of a study of the intellectual aristocracy, and Owen Chadwick, who is always said to have turned down every bishopric offered him.

But, it’s not cheap.

I have just been on my bicycle to the offices of Lund Humphries to pick up one of the first copies of my book, John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture, just arrived from the printers in Bosnia.

This is, as every author knows, an exciting moment.  Instead of staring at it on screen for the last four years, it is a reality.  And Lund Humphries have done a really wonderful job in terms of its production.  White paper.  Matt photographs.  I already knew that the designer, Mark Thomson, had done a brilliant job in terms of its layout, mixing colour and black-and white, double-page spreads, drawings and contemporary portraits, giving the reader a proper sense, I hope, of the gestation of the work and of Vanbrugh’s friends, allies and clients.  David Valinsky has taken excellent photographs of the three greatest surviving houses – Castle Howard, Blenheim and Grimsthorpe.

You are all invited to the launch at the Wigmore Hall on November 20th:-

https://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/202511201200

Please come.

Meanwhile, copies can be pre-ordered from Lund Humphries.

Or Amazon.

We walked out to the mausoleum. 

Along the terrace:-

To the Temple of the Four Winds:-

Across the fields:-

Up the steps:-

Into the chapel:-

There is no grander or more architecturally powerful space in England:

It was a wonderful experience to go to Castle Howard after a day of talking about Vanbrugh’s role in its design.  I find it easy to believe that Vanbrugh was responsible for its conception and initial design, without necessarily needing Hawksmoor’s help; but then the Great Hall is so spatially complex.  So where did the ideas for it come from ?  It doesn’t feel like Wren.  Paris ?  From prints ? Or Vanbrugh’s recollection of buildings he had visited before returning to London in 1693:-

Tim Abrahams of Machine Books is doing a great job in publicising my forthcoming biography of Vanbrugh:-

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” In an era, when we have lost our understanding of the past’s remove, when events back then, must be judged by the values of right now, we struggle to find the importance of art and architecture which do not accord with our present preoccupations.

Swimming against this tide is Charles Saumarez Smith’s wonderful book about the great British architect John Vanbrugh – and he was great, Wren and Hawksmoor fans – which neither judges him by the moral standards of our age nor asserts an appreciation of him as somehow essential to preserving our national selfhood.

He is though, in Charles’s description, a mercurial figure who helps form Britain’s understanding of architecture’s potential; what it can do in symbolic terms for different political entities including the state.

We were tipped off that Walthamstow has an amazing greengrocer-cum-foodstore, which looks as if it has been there for years, but apparently opened quite recently.  25 types of tomato.  It’s definitely worth the trip:-

We went on an expedition to St. Mary, Walthamstow which felt unexpectedly rural, definitely not London, a bit of old Essex, surroundings by an overgrown graveyard:-

In the chancel is a very good monument to Sir Thomas and Dame Mary Merry, commissioned by Thomas from Nicholas Stone the Elder in 1634, with excellent relief portraits of them both below:-

In the nave is a monument to Lady Lucy Stanley, who died c.1630.  She was the daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, so posh:-

By the north door is an unusual columnar monument commemorating Anne Wainwright:-

The church has just been restored by the NHLF, an interesting model: no pews, a café at the back, a children’s play area ie for community use.  It’s presumably a way of keeping it in active use.

Then, there’s the graveyard:-

To celebrate the announcement of Vanbrugh 300, Tim Abrahams has released a podcast in which we had a wide-ranging discussion about Vanbrugh as a playwright as well as an architect, about his qualities as an architect and his social and intellectual milieu. It’s available as an apple podcast (I hope this is the correct link):-

https://www.timabrahams.net/everything/tag/Podcast

Glad to see news of Vanbrugh 300 filtering out on social media:-

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/vanbrugh300-a-year-long-celebration-of-englands-boldest-baroque-architect-82792/

I haven’t been since the mid-1990s when it was bare fields which felt nowhere.  It’s certainly changed. 

I was looking mainly at the most recent housing developments which adopt a Regency vernacular, but still with a lot of variety within the template.

This is the norm:-

But there is plenty of variety:-

I had no idea of its scale and ambition and how you can walk straight into the countryside:-