Category Archives: Comment

The Bridge on the River Kwai

I was reading an article about the 1974 V&A exhibition about the Destruction of the Country House. It cited a Guardian review of the time, to the effect that why should we care that the houses of wealthy (or once … Continue reading

Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Comment, Montacute, Restoration and Conservation | Leave a comment

The Restoration of Chartres Cathedral

Looking back at the controversy over the restoration of Chartres cathedral, and a look at some commentary available on-line: an article in the Spectator in 2012 by Alasdair Palmer (http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/arts-feature/7836868/restoration-tragedy/), a blog by Martin Filler in the New York Review … Continue reading

Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Comment, Restoration and Conservation, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

On Fabriques and Monstrous Future Ruins

‘Someone, he [Austerlitz] added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size—the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, … Continue reading

Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Book Commentaries, Comment, Fabriques, Town and Village | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Impossibility of Australian Architectural Connoisseurship

‘An Australian, however well-informed, simply cannot distinguish between a piece of Trust House timbering and a genuine Tudor building; an Englishman however uncultured knows at once …’. [Evelyn Waugh to John Betjeman, cited in A.N. Wilson’s Biography of Betjeman, 2007, … Continue reading

Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Comment, Garden History | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment