Send us a textPicnic hampers, black tie, world-class opera — it’s the season for Glyndebourne, the festival that sired the happy, uniquely British phenomenon of country house opera. This week Clive and John discuss the house from which it all began (still central to the experience) as well as the headstrong, eccentric but visionary John Christie, founder of the festival in the 1930s. They reveal a tale of love, passion (for music), setbacks, epic dreams and triumph… somebody should write an opera about it.
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The Tower of London: The Most Notorious Castle in England
Send us a textThe Tower of London is one of the great sights of the capital, a place that is as steeped in history as it has sometimes been, through the numerous executions it has witnessed, drenched in blood. In this week’s episode of Your Places or Mine, Dr John Goodall, Britain’s foremost historian of castle architecture, discusses this extraordinary fortification-cum-palace with Professor Clive Aslet, describing both its architectural features and the uses that it has served through the centuries. First built by William the Conqueror within an angle of London’s Roman wall, the Tower of London dominated (in all senses) the City of London, being last fortified against the Chartist demonstrations in the 19th century. The White Tower, so-called from the whitewash that once covered it, gave its name to the Tower of London as a whole – a unique example of the usage, since all other great fortifications identified with a town or city are known as Castle (as in Windsor Castle or Warwick Castle). This is not the only quirk of history at the Tower: from the 13th century it housed a menagerie of exotic animals.
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Lutyens and Lady Emily: a Marriage of Opposites
Send us a textIn his mid 20s, Lutyens fell passionately in love with Lady Emily Lytton, daughter of the Earl Lytton, a diplomat and Viceroy of India who had really wanted to be a poet. He pursued her ardently, writing letters that were romantic, delightful and often funny. Beating down opposition from Lady Emily’s family, they got marriage in 1897 but were an unlikely couple. She hated bearing children and domesticity. He was often away from home, on an endless round of visits to clients, country houses and building sites. Frustrated and feeling neglected, Emily found spiritual satisfaction in the newly invented religion of Theosophy, falling hook, line and sinker for its beautiful Indian world leader, Jiddu Krishnamurti — an embarrassment for Lutyens when he was designing the Viceroy’s House and laying out the new capital of the Raj, New Delhi. In middle age the architect developed an intimate relationship with the rich and domineering Lady Sackville. And yet husband and wife never ceased to be close, as their letters attest.In this week’s episode Clive and John examine the role that Lady Emily played in Lutyens’s life and vice-versa, with all the joys and heartache, frustration and rhapsodic moments of this singular marriage.
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Lutyens and Hudson: Huddy and Ned
Send us a textSir Edwin (Ned) Lutyens’s old friend Edward Hudson founded Country Life in 1897. A London printer, he was not a countryman, but commissioned three country houses as well as the Country Life office in Covent Garden. Convinced of Lutyens’s genius, he also ‘boomed’ him through the magazine and lost no opportunity to promote his career.Nobody could be better placed to discuss this extraordinary creative partnership than Clive and John, both of whom are closely associated with the magazine that is Hudson’s legacy.Although not outwardly charismatic, Huddy — as Lutyens called him — had one grande if not wholly required amour. This was for the fiery Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia, who played to his guests. Perhaps there were hidden depths.
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Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll: Home and Garden
Send us a textThe first of a series on the early-20th-century architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, this episode examines the relationship between the young Ned — gangly, witty, shy — and the craftswoman turned gardener Gertrude Jekyll, his senior by 25 years. With her deep instinct for crafts and passionate attachment to Surrey, she shaped the boyish architect and introduced him to many of his best early clients. She describes the building of Munstead Wood, the house outside Godalming which he designed for her, in her book Home and Garden.
A podcast about places and buildings, with tales about history and people. From author and publisher Clive Aslet and the architectural editor of Country Life, & John Goodall
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