Your Places or Mine

Episodes

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  SERIES FINALE: How to Make Development Beautiful (With Nicholas Boys Smith) 08.08.2026 1h 7m

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode Clive unveils some new research. It’s the result of a coffee shared with his guest in today’s podcast, Nicholas Boys-Smith. Nicholas founded Create Streets, a social enterprise, think tank and urban design consultancy in 2012. The coffee shop was on a schizophrenic part of the street, half of it being Victorian terrace — brick built, repeating classical windows, a lot of variety in the modest shops and cafes as street level — the opposite side of the street ha...
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  How to Bury A Medieval Monarch: The History of Worcester Cathedral 31.07.2026 58m

  Send us Fan Mail Worcester Cathedral rises above the banks of the River Severn as one of England's great medieval buildings, its honey-coloured stone and soaring central tower dominating the city's skyline much as they have for over nine centuries. Who better to discuss its architecture and history than John Goodall? Founded in 680 as a monastic community, the earliest fabric of the cathedral dates from a rebuilding begun in 1084 under Bishop Wulfstan, the only English-born bishop to re...
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  Guardsmen and Grandeur: The History of Buckingham Palace 20.07.2026 1h 2m

  Send us Fan Mail Everybody in the world has heard of Buckingham Palace. The official London residence of the British monarch, it stands at the western end of St James’s Park, very near St James’s Palace. As well as being used for great occasions of State, accompanied by the daily ritual of the changing of the guard, it was also somewhere that successive kings and queens lived when they were in town. Now the decision has been made for HM the King to move out, giving Clive and John ...
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  London’s Golden Orb: The History of Monument 14.07.2026 1h 3m

  Send us Fan Mail The Monument, rising above the streets near London Bridge, is one of the City of London's most striking historical landmarks - a soaring Doric column erected to commemorate the Great Fire of London of 1666. Begun in 1671 and completed in 1677, it stands 202 feet tall, a height chosen deliberately: the distance from its base to the spot on Pudding Lane where the fire is believed to have started. But who designed it? The candidates are Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hook...
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  An English Icon: The History of Warwick Castle 06.07.2026 58m

  Send us Fan Mail As a great expert on the English castle, John has been thinking about one of the great icons of England: Warwick Castle. This extraordinary building, created over centuries, has come down to us intact, not having been slighted after the Civil War in the 17th century – something exceptional. Equally remarkable is the mythology that surrounds the place, including the medieval legends attached to Guy of Warwick, after whom one of the castle’s famous towers is named. ...
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  The History of Greenwich, Masterpiece of the English Baroque 28.06.2026 1h 3m

  Send us Fan Mail Clive has taken the riverboat to Greenwich, one of the most spectacular sites of London. ‘Good Duke’ Humphrey, brother of Henry V, built a retreat here in the 15th century, which Henry VII developed into a palace. This was where Henry VIII jousted in his early years, and where his armour was made. To the early Stuarts Greenwich’s was important from its position at the mouth of the Thames: this was where foreign ambassadors landed on their way to the court: I...
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  A Tudor Treasure, The Gem of Lincolnshire: Doddington Hall 20.06.2026 1h 3m

  Send us Fan Mail Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire is one of those country houses you find only in Britain. The attics are full of old toys, military headgear, unwanted commodes and a giant figure of the White Rabbit, left over from an Alice in Wonderland-themed event. A collection of Roman antiquities, some found on the estate, is displayed in the downstairs lavatory, along with a child’s pedal-operated aeroplane with patriotic RAF roundels. From the roof, you can see Lincoln...
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  A Parade of Characters and Art: the Glittering Story of Stansted Park, Sussex 30.05.2026 58m

  Send us Fan Mail Clive and John have both been to Stansted Park, outside Chichester, though at different times. Clive remembers it from the time he helped the owner Eric Bessborough revise a book in the 1980s, whereas John’s connection is more recent. They both find it an astonishing example of an economic revival, apparently inspired by the Covid years when the public was desperate for open space. As a result, the house and park are beautifully maintained, while estate buil...
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  Dons and Divinity: The Marvellous History of Cambridge 16.05.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail John has been to Cambridge to see the castle, the mound of which still survives. Although a graduate of Peterhouse and now a Visiting Professor of Architecture, associated with the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Clive comes new to this early history but many stories of more recent times. Together the pair mull over the development of this remarkable city, famous for one of the most beautiful ensembles of buildings...
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  The Story of the American Country House: Developing an Idea 09.05.2026 58m

  Send us Fan Mail Clive is writing a book for Yale University Press on the Story of the American Country House. John indulges him by discussing an introductory overview of the subject, with which Clive has been engaged since Yale published his The American Country House in 1990. Here is a rich and colourful theme, celebrating a sometimes spectacular architectural tradition shaped by remarkable individuals. There are numerous reasons people in Colonial American and the developing U...
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  The Story of Stowe House: A School of Marble and Memory 02.05.2026 1h 1m

  Send us Fan Mail When the German Prince Puckler Muskau visited England in 1826, he told his divorced wife that it would take her ‘at least 420 years to see all the parks of England, of which there are undoubtedly at least 100,000, for they swarm in every direction.’ One of the most splendid was that at Stowe in Buckinghamshire. The garden was accompanied by an equally important country house, if not palace. John has just been there and describes this extraordinary creation, the product ...
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  Perhaps The Finest Street In Europe - The History of The Strand 25.04.2026 59m

  Send us Fan Mail ‘Let’s all go down the Strand!’ ran a popular music hall song. But what sort of street were they singing about? The future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli called it ‘perhaps the finest street in Europe’ in 1847. Which is quite a claim to live up to. Certainly the Strand, one of London’s most famous and important thoroughfares, has had a long and colourful history, with much shape-shifting over the centuries. John and Clive reveal the secrets of ...
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  Last of The Laskett? A Great British Garden Under Threat (EMERGENCY BROADCAST) 19.04.2026 58m

  Send us Fan Mail The Laskett in Herefordshire is one of the most remarkable gardens to have been created in the 20th century but now it’s future is threatened. Sir Roy Strong, scholar, museum director and the author of over 70 erudite books, and his theatre-designer wife Julia Trevelyan Oman created it as a bolt hole from London, beginning in 1973 – a bleak time of industrial unrest and inflation. It grew to become the largest formal garden made in the UK since the Second World Wa...
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  Story of Ampleforth Chapel, Yorkshire, Masterpiece of an Architectural Giant of the 20th Century, Sir Giles Scott 11.04.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail One of the most famous Catholic schools in Britain, Ampleforth College in Yorkshire this year celebrates the centenary of its chapel, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott has emerged in recent years as a colossus of 20th-century architecture, bestriding it alike with his religious buildings – notably the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool – and his secular designs, such as Battersea Power Station and the familiar red telephone kiosk. John describes the remarkab...
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  John Kinross' Manderston: A Symbol of Edwardian England 21.03.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail Few houses better convey the opulence of Edwardian country house life than Manderston in the Scottish Borders. Built in the first years of the 20th century, it is an exquisite work of the scholarly architect John Kinross – which has always been kept up to the high standards set by Kinross’s client, the racehorse owner Sir James Miller. Clive reveals a particular affection for Kinross because he knew his son, also called John Kinross, when the latter was an old but sprig...
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  The History of Norwich: Conquest, Castle and Cathedral 14.03.2026 57m

  Send us Fan Mail The fascinating city of Norwich, capital of Norfolk, was one of the richest town in England during the Middle Ages. The cathedral dates from the early Norman period, as does the Castle which has recently been magnificently redisplayed. As Britain’s preeminent historian of the architecture of the Middle Ages, John has of course been to see it, and provides a superb commentary. Clive does his best to keep up by describing a Victoria roller-skating rink which n...
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  Archer's Masterpiece: The Building and Rebuilding of St. John's Smith Square 07.03.2026 1h

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  Northumberland's Treasure: The History of Alnwick Castle 26.02.2026 56m

  Send us Fan Mail Alnwick Castle in Northumberland is one of the most spectacular castles in England, an immense fortification that guarded the border with Scotland for centuries. The Percy family who built it had almost king-like power over their territory – and were not above rebelling against the king himself: the impetuous Harry Hotspur was killed fighting against Henry IV at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, while his wily father feigned illness. John describes the history and...
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  Plinths, Columns and Controversy: The History of Trafalgar Square 13.02.2026 1h 1m

  Send us Fan Mail Trafalgar Square has long been regarded as the centre of London. It wasn’t always. John describes its medieval configuration when it was still countryside – hence the name of James Gibbs’s church St Martin in the Fields. This was where Richard II kept his hawks in the royal mews. A square was proposed by the Prince Regent’s architect John Nash but not in the form we have it today. The proximity of a barracks kept public order. What about the monument that do...
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  Detmar Blow: Disciple of Ruskin, Champion of the Arts and Crafts Movement 06.02.2026 1h

  Send us Fan Mail Detmar Blow was one of the brightest stars of the Arts and Crafts Movement – but his story is also dark and mysterious. A pupil of the Kensington School of Art, where he met Lutyens – a lifelong friend – he won a travelling scholarship to draw cathedrals in France. At Abbeville, he had a chance encounter with the great Victorian sage aesthete John Ruskin, then in the decline of his old age. Blow escorted Ruskin to the Alps and imbibed his radical philosophy....