 It's a huge treat to have you with us on this wonderful celebratory occasion, which of course we're holding in Mark's honour. Tonight in fact we're going to be celebrating three things simultaneously. The first is Mark's 90th birthday, which fell a fortnight ago. I think it's only right that I should begin by asking you all to join me in raising your glasses and wishing Mark a belated happy birthday. The second thing we're celebrating of course is Mark's newest book, A Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture, 1540 to 1640, which we're delighted to be publishing next week. As well as marking both these events however, we thought we'd take the opportunity of their conjunction to do something else. That is to ask Mark to join us in celebrating the entirety of his remarkable career as an architectural historian, which of course shows no sign of abating. Most of all however we wanted to use tonight's event to give Mark himself the chance to talk at some length about his multifaceted career and to respond to questions about that career from you, the audience. Mark will be in conversation with a trio of friends who are all immensely distinguished architectural historians in their own right. I'm delighted to have on stage alongside me. First, John Goodall, who will ask Mark about his work on Elizabethan and Jacobian architecture. Second, Michael Hall, who will steer the discussion towards Mark's publications on 18th, especially 19th century British architecture. And finally, Catherine Croft, who will encourage Mark to tell us more about his many contributions to the field of 20th century British architecture. So shall we start? John, over to you. To start at the beginning as it were, I wanted to ask Mark first of all about Hardwick Hall. Because for those of us who are lucky enough to go to Mark's birthday party at Instant Paul's Covent Garden, they will know that the birthday cake took the form of Hardwick Hall. Not exactly as any of us might recognize it, but it did nevertheless do so. More or less. More or less. With 90 candles on it. No more or no less. But it's clearly a building that has underpinned your entire interest in a way in the Elizabethan world. And I wonder if you could start by just telling us a little bit about what it means to you and your experience of it as a child. As a child? Yes, I mean it was just extraordinary, really. But I didn't react to it architecturally at all, I don't think as a child. But I remember looking out of the window of the nursery which is on the top floor at the battered ruins of Old Hardwick and decided that there must have been a fire that had been burned. So when we were all set to drawing one day I did a lovely picture of Old Hardwick with flames belching out. But I didn't really notice the architecture very much, I don't think. It was all shut up in the war and we couldn't go there. But then I came back, when was it? When I was 12 or so, or 13, 14, and all I could think of writing to my father was, it's beautifully tidy inside. And it wasn't, I think, it was a combination of my actually going to stay there with my aunt Evie when she finally moved in there and Sir General Sitwell's amazing sort of purple prose which poured out of him about Hardwick which first got me to see the point of it architecturally and then more and more and more and more. And just every time I stayed there, you know, I saw it was just so wonderful to be able to walk around it by oneself, nobody there. You said to me that you think you remember the footmen complaining about powdering their wigs and things like that. Yeah, I think I do. Well, it's never quite sure whether one remembers correctly or what one's been told. And the footmen certainly didn't have powdered hair. You know, when I was there, they were only on special occasions. So I never saw a footman with powdered hair. And so I mean Hardwick, because it's a building that clearly underpinned your enthusiasm for writing Robert Smithson. I mean, in fact, the enthusiasm for the buildings is the thing that shines out of your preface. You describe the Elizabethan world as being very unfashionable at the time. Was it a kind of conscious decision to start getting involved with it, or were you aware of the second Elizabethan age reviving and you wished to be a part of it? I just, you know, these things happen gradually. I just got more and more interested. And then at last the time came when I had to decide what to write my thesis on, when I decided I wanted to be an architectural historian. And Hardwick was just the obvious one. There was no, and Robert Smithson, I mean, and Hardwick arising out of that. So having briefly considered James Wyatt, and I can't think why, I opted for Robert Smithson. And, you know, the more I wrote that book, the more involved I got really. Can you describe going and seeing these places? I mean, you know, you were working away. You did your thesis an incredible two years. And you talk again with great enthusiasm about just how exciting these buildings were. Did you sort of stop off with, you know, in Hardwick and go and visit lots of places from there in a car or were you cycling to see these places? What was your, and what were the owners like? What was your experience of those things? Well, yes, I suppose, but Bolzowa was the nearest and to walk over to Bolzowa was wonderful. And what was so, I mean, fascinating in those days was everywhere was empty. I mean, there were no interpretation centers or anything like that. And I would walk over to Bolzowa and there was a nice old caretaker there. It'd be just me and him in the building. I mean, obviously it couldn't last like that, but I remember with great pleasure those days when you could, you know, I was very pleased with Wofort, what they call Wofort towers now when it had pigs grazing on the grass in front of it, which I photographed. It was just a funny world. It's just so different from what it is now. Did you, you've written, of course, about your sort of teachers and the people you particularly admired when you were a student, but what about your peers? I mean, I noticed, for example, just glancing at the New Diction, you described drinking coffee with Roy Strong at the Courtauld. Who were your, you know, formative peers and were they very helpful in your lightning work as you raced through your PhD? I suppose Margaret Winnie, who was my supervisor, who was a dear person, John Somerson was my hero really in those days. Roy and I, Roy was a shy young student in those days. Hard to believe. We used to have coffee together and plan our futures. And now who else did it? Well, yes, Lucy Worsley was a great enthusiast. And I read a lot, I read a lot of nonsense, actually, in those days, looking back. I've done rarely moving account of Berle's Evercastle and the revival of chivalry. And I don't think Berle's Evercastle has anything to do with the revival of chivalry at all. And also, Mark, you know, more recently, of course, you've written an enormous amount outside the world of architectural history. Indeed, I believe you're completing a rather racy novel at the present time. When did the wider literary career begin? Were you writing even as a schoolboy about other things? I didn't write about anything except buildings for a very long time. And then I just supported to be amusing to write about other things. I mean, to write about myself, really, actually. So I read these two books, Friendships and Enthusiasm. When did you find your voice as a writer? Was that something that came very easily to you through reading, or is it something you had to work very hard to establish and, you know, coming through country life and, you know, the regular turnaround of things? Yes, I had to work quite hard sort of editing what I'd written to make it seem as it was written very easily. But it wasn't. It was quite hard work, I found, actually. Shaping once grows. And when did it come? When did your voice come? When did it come? Well, straight away, I suppose, but I mean only as a result of work. Well, there was country life, I suppose, where I really, really got going because I had to write something every few weeks, you know, to a date line, so you just had to get it out. That's a familiar feeling. I realise my time is already running short. It's like the Christmas, the different Christmases and Dickens, isn't it? Each of us have our short period of time with Mark. At the last thing I'd like, before you push my hat down over my head and extinguish me, I'd like to ask about your feeling about Elizabethan architecture now. I mean, when you reprint, Smithson, you talk about how poorly many of the buildings that you studied and loved had fared. And how do you feel, and you've described how different going to Bolsova then was or Hardwick then was to today, how do you feel about Elizabethan architecture today? Do you feel it's a fashionable subject once more or something completely different? Well, as far as the National Trust is concerned, it seems to be a non-fashionable subject. All they are concerned is having a nice day out with the kids, as far as I can see. But I don't know. I mean, I did try myself to write something which would be readable for everybody. Perhaps I had some success in that way. But now, the situation, you just, it was very selfish, really, to enjoy these buildings on one's own. And you obviously interpretation centers and so on are necessary because people want them because they want to have the building explained to them. So I can't say I'm, I can possibly say I'm against them. But I do sort of rather nostalgically think of those days when you had the whole place to yourself. Do you think you would have entered into your own career if it hadn't been for your personal experience of staying at Hardwick? No, I think I was already looking at buildings. I mean, Hardwick sort of brought it to a consummation, so to speak, but I think probably it's very interesting to think what gets, what makes someone become an architectural historian. And actually the first building I remember being turned on by was the Romanesque Church at Melbourne in Derbyshire, which is totally different. You know, it's another world altogether. But that's actually the first building that excited me, aged about 12 or 13, I think. And as I was saying, when I first went to Hardwick as a little boy or even as a young, as a slightly older boy, it didn't turn me on the way it gradually did, just more and more and more. But I suspect that if Hardwick hadn't been there, I would still have become an architectural historian doing something quite different, obviously. Maybe written about James Wyatt, I don't know. On which happy note, I now pass over to Michael to ask, well, I'll let Michael ask his own questions. Mark, it's already been mentioned, but in tracing the route that took you to the 19th century and the Victorians, I think one might start with country life, perhaps, because I realise that another anniversary that we're celebrating is it's the 65th anniversary of your first article. Is it really? On lonely. Oh, yes, yes. But that was actually two years before you joined the staff in 1958 as an architectural writer. How did that come about? Well, I was looking for a job and having done my thesis and I tried the Ministry of Works, as it were, in those days, citing as my references the Duke of Wellington and Rupert Ganes. No ice at all with these ridiculous avatars. I didn't get that job. And then I tried for the National Trust. And I don't know why. I thought I was made for it in a way, but I had a bad interview, so I didn't get that. And then, fortunately for me, Gordon Ayers, who's one of the free architectural writers on country life, died and a job there came up quite unexpectedly. So I put in for it and I got it. And very often I know at country life, once you started as a writer, they had a book waiting for you. There was something they wanted you to do. And at that stage, Christopher Hussey had just published The Late Georgians or Country Houses. Was it almost immediately it was suggested that you might look at the Victorians? Or was that your idea? There was one reason why they took me on. Because Christopher Hussey had just started writing about Victorian houses. And he wanted me to, you know, to carry on. And so I did, you know, and it was thanks to him that I joined the Victorian Society the year after I joined Country Life. And I gradually became more and more aware of Victorian architecture. Because one looks back and it is extraordinary what fresh territory it was. I mean, you were the first person to write any serious academic articles about William Burgess. Yes. In your early articles on Cardiff Castle, which I think was 1961 or so on. I mean, wasn't much resistance to you writing about such buildings in the rather stately and occasionally gentile pages of country life? Yes. I mean, I got very caught up by Burgess. And quite a few of the houses I wrote about. Others I just found extraordinary, like Bear Wood. I couldn't say. I thought it was a beautiful house. But it was an absolutely fascinating house because of the planning and the complex planning of Victorian country houses fascinated me more and more. The way it was all split up into different realms. The bachelor's and unmarried women and servants the same, male servants. All carefully separated from each other. And this terrific sort of substructure of servants would support you the whole thing. I got more and more interested in that. I looked back at the original reviews of the Victorian country house when it came out. And it should be said perhaps that Country Life was going to publish it, but then in the late 60s it closed down its book publishing arm, which was why the first edition was published by Boxbury University Press. But the early reviews, I mean, they all comment on how wonderful the social history is. So it leads really to the inevitable question. I mean, did the Victorian country houses was there a straight line from there to what remains your most famous book and probably the single most influential work in architectural history in the past half century, life in the English country house? Yes, it all started from the Victorian country house, I think. Yes. Robert Smith said and got sort of respectful reviews but only a very small sale. And it was the Victorian country house which sold well and got lots of reviews and rarely established my reputation. I mean, that's what got me going. And did the Victorian society make use of you? I mean, were you pulled into conservation battles at that stage? Because, of course, the 60s was the sort of heroic age of conservation in the 19th century. Yes, we had these two great battles, Houston Arch and the Cornix Age. Cornix Age, yeah. And that took me over into conservation, really, because it was so upsetting. And we had this great Victorian society battle which failed to save them. Before I have to hand it over into the 20th century, I was thinking of the things that came out of your interest, particularly in the 19th century. I mean, there are so many books, I began scrolling through your entry in the British Library catalogue and it goes on for page after page after page. But one book I'd like to mention, because I think it was your first one on the Victorian subject after the Victorian country house, was the Victorian pubs. Oh, yes. Was that almost deliberately? Yes, it was absolutely deliberate that I thought having written about the upper classes, I would then write about the middle classes, which was the Queen Anne style, which was sort of middle and upper middle classes, and then move on and write about the lower and lower middle classes with Victorian pubs. And that was a deliberate choice. But also Victorian pubs was intriguing because no one had occurred to anyone that they could be documented like, you know, like Hardwick or something, you know. But when I looked into it, I found there was more and more documentation, including drawings and plans and everything, and the names of the architects and the craftsmen involved, which one could disinter, and that was absolutely fascinating. And more even than the Victorian country houses book, I mean, it's a record of what's been lost because, I mean, the harmony of those pubs, but you were asleep at the end of the class. Oh, yes, yes, indeed, indeed. So few of them are still as they were when I wrote about them. That a life in the English country house just returned to that, and that began with slave lectures at Oxford, didn't it? That was what? It began with your slave lectures at Oxford. That's right, yes. Did you suggest that as a subject or were you approached? Yes, yes. I suppose, I mean, I was asked to give the slave lectures, but I could choose the subject and it just, to talk about houses and their social background was just something I got interested in and it was an obvious choice. So it was my choice and the lectures went down very well and became life in the English country house a year or two later. Before I hand over, I'd just like to mention, finally, because it's a book which I enormously admire, which is your book of Shivery and the English gentleman, Return to Camelot, which is an extraordinary book in some ways because of course it links everything. It actually starts with Elizabethans and goes right through to the Victorians and then ends up with the First World War, so it takes us into the 20th century. I mean, how did that come about? What was the seed that saved that book? Again, I think it developed out of the Victorian country house, probably, just enlarging it to a bigger, wider subject. But I don't know what got me going. I mean, what did happen was that people were, after life in the English country house, people were expecting another book on the country house and they were totally mystified by the Return to Camelot, which is actually, I would say, my favourite book. Well, that takes us into 1918, anyway. Well, I'm here to talk to you about your 20th century work, but I'm listening now. I remember that actually the first work of yours that I came across was Sweetness and Light. When I was an undergraduate at Newnham, I wanted to know not just about the architecture, but about the experience of being an undergraduate and the relationship between that and the buildings. And I loved it, so I was very grateful to you for that. Moving on to the 20th century, I think you have at least four ways in which you've been influential on 20th century architectural history. I mean, as a straightforward historian, but obviously you're also writing critiques of new contemporary buildings, including two of the ones that I think are the most interesting in 1960s buildings in Oxford, the ABK building at Keeble, who did a building study of, and the Flory building at Queens. Both of them have been cases that I've been fighting for for 20th century and your prose and your enthusiasm has been enormous help for us in doing that. But we've also talked briefly. I mean, you had a very active role in the conservation movement. And I think the part that that plays in the overall history of 20th century architecture is only now beginning to be studied. And I didn't know until I was preparing for tonight as well that you actually, you studied as an architect and you studied at the Bartlett and then you went to work in your year out because of the GLC in Architects Departments. Yes, I did. And I designed a school. Yes, I know. A British second-rate it was. Well, and I know that when you did your National Sound Archives you said it was still there and you enjoyed it. I think it's still there. No, it's not. It's gone. It was demolished in 2015. It was a McCarney job, wasn't it? Yes, it was a base system built. And I only designed it because I mean my boss who was supposed to be designing it but had a nervous breakdown, I think. So I surreptitiously designed it instead of him. But no, it's not a building I'm proud of. And I think basically, when I was totally divided as should I become an architect, should I become an architectural historian? And so after my years of country life I thought I'd have a go at becoming an architect. And it quite honestly became clear that I wouldn't be a good architect. It just wasn't the way my mind worked or something that the way my mind worked was in the history and actually writing about buildings rather than designing them. And I don't think I would ever have been a good architect. But I mean I studied architecture only as an undergraduate and I always felt that it gives me a different approach to how I do architectural history. And also a different way of communicating with architects and I wondered whether you felt this benefit. I suppose yes, I've often wondered what I got out of those five years, wasn't it a long time? Yeah, it was a long time. You stuck it longer than I did. Yes, and possibly it did give me a an insight into buildings which I wouldn't have had otherwise. But I'm not even sure about that. I mean what was interesting was just getting to meet a lot of students younger than myself. It was just a very fascinating time and I made some good friends. You met J.M. Richards? Oh yes, yes. Bob Maxwell, who else? Oh well Celia Maxwell, who's... Who did the standard thing of marrying your supervisor. She married Bob, but she was a good friend. There's a charming, nice J.N. Tannfield. I mean I had several relationships of various strengths. So it wasn't wasted time? It wasn't, I didn't think it was a wasted time. It was a long time, certainly. And actually while, in a way, I quite admired myself, because while I was working there I was also writing The Victorian Country House, which was quite an effort because it was an extraordinary change in lifestyle becoming an architectural student and to sort of move from Victorian Country House to Bartlett School, Bartlett School, Victoria Country House was quite an effort. I didn't realise you were doing that simultaneously. That's impressive. So I know that you don't like to ask what your favourite building is, but I'm surprised that you were willing to pick a favourite book just now. Anyway, one of my favourite buildings is definitely Dennis Laston's National Theatre. And I absolutely, looking back at those architectural review articles, I absolutely love the way that you wrote about that. And I wanted to just read a quote because we've talked a bit about how fluent your writing is, but we haven't... I was just really, really impressed by this, but I just wanted to share it with people. So your description of the National Theatre goes like this. The sum total is like nothing else. A rich complex at times mysterious, sometimes confusing, but almost always enjoyable sequence of spaces. Where columns of delicious slenderness saw through several stories of open space or transfixed staircases like skewers. Where climbing each flight of stairs reveals a new vista and the space of every vista vanishes enticemently out of sight around each corner. So just... Oh, it sounds cool. So, I mean, you said at the time that you felt that the National Theatre was unlikely as a landmark to inspire immediate affection, but it's a smolder, not a fissure, which I love. And that's definitely true. I think everyone now probably would agree that that's a cloudless building. Tourist boats used to go up the Thames past the National Theatre and the loudspeaker would boom, we are now passing the ugliest building in London. I mean, does it still excite you, the National Theatre? Yes, it does, absolutely, yes. And I can't resist this because, you know, I'm a great concrete fan and I didn't have you down being concrete fan at all. And you described the concrete as, looks like something between canvas and fur and it's caressing rather than cold. Yeah. Pleasing bed. Great, these nice things. I think they're incredibly evocative and incredibly accessible and compelling, which is great and we need more of that today. Can we move on to I think your most extraordinary and compelling work, your biography of Jim Sterling, which came out in 2000 and I know that you've described that as a process of largely stitching together oral history interviews that you did and I would just be really interested to know how you felt that process of being historian using those materials differed from the archival work that you've been doing. Well, I found it absolutely fascinating because I'd never done anything. I'd always written about people who were safely dead but you know, I mean it was I mean it was a tragedy but it was lucky for me really that Jim died relatively young so there were so many people around who I could talk to and I'd never done that before and so it was a whole new form of life really, recording these people and then editing which is very important which I think I did quite well but one half of the book and probably the most interesting is these recorded conversations with all sorts of different people who came into Jim's life one way or another. Yes, it feels like it's a real kind of capturing a segment of the century as well as the architectural story as well and do you regret at all not doing, not you not doing the great last biography which I'm sure you could have done? No actually that had never occurred to me I mean it never occurred to me because William Curtis had a sort of had a corner in Yeah, yeah and he wrote it and it never occurred to me I mean I enjoyed writing the articles that I did write but it never occurred to me that I might write an actual life of him Right whereas with Jim, well I did and I was so excited by his buildings which again were very controversial Yes, when you wrote about the flurry building you were like all the fuss and bother about how it's you know, teething problems have all gone away in five years I don't think you were quite so spot on with that one No How do you think time has treated Stirling's buildings Well, they gradually had the money spent on them which should have been spent on them when they were built built on the cheap a lot of them Yes Let's just say extraordinary what is extraordinary is beautiful ugly Nicholas Pefster who hated Jim's buildings said that they are actively ugly and I found them actively beautiful Yes and it's the same with Butterfield Exactly, you wrote about Milton Ernest you wrote about Burgess, which people who did despise for example and Paul Thompson again was interesting about you know, John Summerson was very good at coining phrases which were always apt I think and he talked about Butterfield's sadistic hatred of beauty and Paul pointed out that that wasn't the way his mind worked at all or what the results were like really once he understood what it was all about Simon, you wanted to ask a question Simon Thurley, it's very interesting that in your interview just then that your rolling conservation was mentioned a couple of times but I think it was under-egged because I think you've been very influential in the field of conservation and the thing that I wanted to ask you about was this famous list of the ten most important Victorian houses that had to be saved and again and again we used to go back to this at English Heritage when there were big crises with Victorian country houses and it became the Bible this list and I've never known how the list came about and were you asked to do it or did you just invent it and how did it happen? Who asked me to make that list? I cannot remember and I think it was probably a very bad thing to make such a list because there were lots of buildings that should have been on the list and then when they got to trouble people said well they're not on Marc Thuroward's list so we can do what we like with them I'm not sure that it ever happened that way around it certainly happened the other way around that if there was a question and it was on the list that everybody went mad to try and to save it so I don't think that you did any disservice on the list that shouldn't have been on it were they? No! Absolutely not! Jeremy Musson it leads on quite well I think you mentioned your the discipline of writing for Country Life and I wondered whether you could say something about working with architectural photographers I actually would say that the great country life tradition of architectural photography had become a rather stale formula by the time I arrived on Country Life you had officers and other ranks and the photographers were the other ranks and the officer which as you would go to a building and draw a plan of it with little arrows showing where the photographer should put up his camera and take his view which he then dutifully did but he also carefully lit the room so that there were no awkward shadows or anything and also he obliterated any sign of of human life in these rooms the only thing that was occasionally allowed with enormous daring was to have a photograph which showed the owner's dog in front of the fireplace and I just liked the idea I suppose the Piper-Betchman school which you get in the Shell Guides of taking buildings in natural light and I tried to get Country Life to see it that way and I got nowhere really and I did get John Piper to do one article for them which actually they weren't his best photographs and they couldn't really understand them so it came to nothing I I suppose I'm in the most daring article I read Country Life in terms of photography and I can't remember who the photographer was it was a Bayon's manor which was totally derelict the idea of photographing was in a romantic way was completely new to Country Life and I had some difficulty in getting him to agree to do it but I think it was one of my best and most interesting articles Alex Starkey I think who photographed that for you and there are also a very funny set of photographs in the Country Life archive of you with Alex Starkey walking round Mirworth Castle together for no obvious reason and admiring things and being photographed doing it why? This was totally artificial and it was for some form of publicity I forget what form but anyway you know we were set up to do something quite imaginary which we were talking about Did you always go with the photographers? No there is seldom you just did this little plan and they went afterwards and they always waited for perfect weather to the idea of photographing a building of a stormy sky was not acceptable and in the huge average clipping books which really had the same philosophy behind them but they were so well they were magnificent folio volumes and they were so beautifully done that they were very splendid and I felt that the Country Life it had become stale really and there was a Country Life tradition really that you photographed houses surrounded by acres of lawn with a house quite small in the middle of them and what my wife did in Victorian Country House I think great effect was to take all these technically beautiful photographs and cut them right down to the building and I think actually that revolutionized a lot of Country Life photographs they were far more active on that way Pete Smith Mark is there a house in England that you have never been to and always wanted to get into but failed the Palazzo is it Dottay and Mantua but a Country House that I would have liked to write about and was turned down I did think that any Country House actually they were quite keen to be written about in Country Life did you ever get into Wellbeck Abbey yes, yes a lot actually I never thought about writing about it it was such a curious building it was such a sort of cock up really there were these underground rooms which appeared not to be underground when you were in them it was very fascinating I could have written some fascinating articles but now would they let me it was what she called Lady Anne Lady Anne Cavendish Bentech who was always friendly to me and she put me up and I stayed with her and so on but I think possibly she wouldn't have allowed articles to be published and why was that why was that just didn't like publicity some owners were worried about burglary so at a certain stage I was no longer allowed to have plans which was a great pity Malcolm Ayers just curiosity did you choose the houses you could write about for country life or were you told which houses you were going to write about I mean initially I didn't choose because Christopher Hussey had already had several houses photographed so I took those on and wrote about it but after that I don't think just occasionally like when Winston Churchill died I was forced we had no permission to write about it and I was forced to sneak around the various roads around Chartwell to get some idea of what it was like and then write an article I forget how the photographs were taken or there may have been old photographs and the same thing happened when the wedding Princess Alexandra I think I mean it was another sort of occasion some sort of royal occasion which was getting a lot of publicity so country life wanted an article and so they told me to do it but basically on the whole I always chose my own houses thank you Claire Gapper Mark, so having sent the photographer off did you then get to choose which photographs went into the article I didn't do it one thing about the photographs is that when I photograph buildings which had advertisements on the wall the advertisements had to be airbrushed out because country life couldn't be seen to be advertising anyone but I don't I don't think there were any problems there were problems of layout I think because again the idea that photographs of details should be very large instead of very small because they were details didn't happen I mean that was never really accepted in country life in my time in the layout the details tended to be printed much too small Robert Thorne it's characteristic I think of the questions this evening it becomes skewed towards questions about the country life and your association with country life and country houses and you've written about so many other things about towns about pubs about contemporary buildings do you sometimes feel slightly a center disquiet that you're so closely associated with writing about the country house when the version of British history is now so much in question yes I must say I rather was slightly upset when the very nice interview with me by John was published in country life that I was preferred to as Dr Mark Giroir the country house historian but I don't like being thought of as a country house historian because I've written about country houses a good deal but I've also written about a great deal of buildings and I think some of my most interesting work has been right away from the country house there have been other historians I'm thinking primarily here of David Cannadine and his wife Linda Colley who quite rightly emphasised the the primacy what should be the primacy in British history of the industrial mercantile past rather than the country house past I don't think there is such a concentration on the country house these days possibly there was when when I wrote life in the English country house one reason why it was a great seller was because country houses were extremely fashionable that owners were going back to live in their country houses that all sorts of enthusiasts were buying country houses doing them up usually without enough money so they had to sell them in the end but country houses were very much in and I don't think they are to the same extent now I would have thought there was a lot of interest in other than country houses I don't think they dominate the scene at all these days thank you well I think we need to bring it to a close so can I ask you all to thank Mark for all his responses to your questions