Simon Jenkins

Former editor of The Times and leading conservationist Simon Jenkins looks at the history of architecture in Britain and says everyone is a consumer of architecture and it is important to understand it.

Jenkins looks at the battles over the European traditions of classicism and gothic. He ranges across the gothic cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely and Wells, the houses of the Tudor renaissance, the great estates of Georgian London, the docks of Liverpool, the mills of Yorkshire and the chapels of south Wales. He explains how 20th-century modernism politicised public taste in architecture. It gave us Coventry Cathedral but also the brutalist monoliths of Sheffield’s Park Hill. Jenkins says it wasn’t until the 1970s that the public began to give voice to the conservation revolution.

Jenkins is a former editor of the Evening Standard and The Timesand remains a columnist for the Guardian. He played a key role in the conservation revolution as deputy chairman of English Heritage and chairman of the National Trust. His other books include Britain’s 100 Best Railway Stations, England’s Thousand Best Churches and England’s Thousand Best Houses.