James Stourton

Please note. This event was originally scheduled for 10am but now takes place at 12pm.

Art historian and former chairman of Sotheby’s UK James Stourton looks at the history of heritage and its place in the world today and the world of tomorrow.

Stourton looks at parts of our heritage that have been deliberately preserved including the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattersall Castle, and the works of art inside them. He identifies two periods of ‘heroic conservation’, the 1880s and the 1960s, and looks at the threats from wealth, rampant development and complacency. He says every era has its own notion of heritage as does every social group and every generation.

Stourton is author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorised biography of Kenneth Clark. He sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel that decides what constitutes heritage and should be saved for the nation.