Architecture as history for everyone

MANY readers of COUNTRY LIFE will be aware that Mark Girouard, a former Architectural Editor of this magazine, died on August 16 at the age of 90. It’s not the business of Athena to write obituaries, but it is worth reflecting on his career.

Curiously, the (1945). This book, by his own account, made him ‘mad with excitement’ when he first read it. That’s not a reaction popularly associated with architectural historians for their subject. It was a quality, however, that shone through his early support of such bodies as the Victorian Society and the Spitalfields Trust, as well as their causes, including the ill-fated campaign to preserve the Euston Arch (demolished in 1961).