The flair of Betjeman meets the learning of Pevsner

The key to this book lies in its title - for it is not about the buildings of England or their architects but rather the story of England itself. It is a stupendous achievement, an instant classic, from a real scholar and a very rare man, says A. N. Wilson. Every home should have one
Westminster Abbey Nave To East.
2 January 2014

The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings by Simon Thurley (William Collins, £35)

The Building of England, note well. Not the Buildings of England. Not the History of English Architecture — still less the History of British Architecture. In making this limitation to his theme, Simon Thurley is doing something much more interesting than writing a general-history coffee-table middle-brow survey.

Consider the simple fact that you will be more than halfway through this stout, richly illustrated volume before you find a building with a named architect. By then, he will have shown you sublime Saxon churches such as St John the Evangelist, Escomb, County Durham; all the great Gothic cathedrals; the medieval castles; Westminster Hall; and the great Bars of the Northern towns — the gates of such places as York and Beverley.

Architects are only half the story of architecture, and one of the eye-opening things about Dr Thurley’s romp through history is that many of the best buildings do not have architects, as such, at all. The great cathedrals, and many of the most interesting houses, churches, schools and colleges, grew from the shared aesthetic and social needs of the English people who commissioned them — abbots, headmasters, reeves, merchants, noblewomen.

There’s another thing. The title has at least two meanings. What its author is reminding us is that architecture is far too important a matter to be left to the architects, still less the architectural historians. For in telling the story of the abbeys — and their desolation — the universities, the castles, the great houses, the towns, markets, corn exchanges, factories and sprawling conurbations of the years 410- 1935, Dr Thurley has been telling the story of England itself.

He decides not to cover the modern period — no doubt there is a neatness in this but I think it was a mistake. However difficult it may be to fit the Shard and the Gherkin and Coventry Cathedral into his scheme of things, he should have tried. It seems bizarre, frankly, to end the story of The Building of England, with George Val Meyer’s Broadcasting House, 1932 and George Grey Wornam’s Royal Institute of British Architects. When I closed the book, I found myself singing under my breath: “Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.”

Nevertheless, this is a truly stupendous achievement. Thurley is a very rare man. He is one of the best architectural historians alive in the world — a real scholar. In fact, one of the best architectural historians this country has ever produced: his work on the historic royal palaces changed our perception of the subject for ever.

He is a brilliant populist — witness his most assured presence on television. He is an aesthete and an intellectual — but he also has huge administrative flair and runs English Heritage with Napoleonic efficiency and aplomb. During the heyday of this country, from the Elizabethans to the First World War, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of Thurleys — clever polymaths who did indeed “build Britain”. Where are they all now? In the City, I suspect, making themselves money rather than being public-spirited as he is.

Whatever the answer, we have Thurley, and we have his book, which is an instant classic. I bought five copies for Christmas presents. Every household should have one.

A young person who reads this book would understand not just about architecture but about England. Older readers will think — here is a man who combines the imaginative flair of Betjeman with the learning of Pevsner.

He is also blessed in his publisher. This is a beautiful object, crammed with superb colour photographs and ground plans and elevations. It makes you think how stupendously lucky we are to live in a country with so much unspoilt glory.

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £28, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

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