Biography

Historian and Writer

As a leading historian, I have written some thirteen single author history books and many other scholarly articles and pieces for general readership. The full list can be seen here.  My primary area of interest is English architecture and in 2013 I published my history of English Architecture The Building of England.  I am currently working on its second edition to bring it up to date and to add two new chapters continuing the story up to 2020.

Most recently I have completed a two-volume project to tell the story of royal building, patronage and social life at the courts of the Tudors and Stuarts. Houses of Power (2017) and Palaces of Revolution (2021) synthesise and develop material published in my heavyweight histories of individual royal residences and in my periodical literature over the last thirty years. There is an accompanying website royalpalaces.com.

My other area of expertise is in what can loosely called heritage, the protection and interpretation of historic sites and museums. I have also written widely on this including the important book, Men from the Ministry (2013), which, for the first time, tells the story of the invention of modern heritage custodianship in England.

National Heritage Lottery Fund

I was appointed by the Prime Minister to Chair the National Heritage Memorial Fund in February 2021. The Memorial Fund was created in 1980 to save, for the nation, outstanding parts of our heritage. This ranges from paintings to steam engines, from country houses, to landscapes, from manuscripts to ships. It currently has an endowment of around £590m.

In 1993 the Fund was given responsibility for the distribution of the 20% heritage share of National Lottery profits. Currently this equates to some £350m a year. The Fund has a very wide definition of Heritage and has always been keen to stress that it should be for everyone.

In 2020, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced a £1.57billion package to protect the UK’s culture and heritage from the economic impacts of COVID-19. Over £1.2b was allocated from the Culture Recovery Fund, reaching around 5000 individual organisations and sites. The Heritage Fund distributed the money in partnership with Historic England. Other funds were also distributed for Wales and Northern Ireland and from DEFRA. Amongst the outstanding heritage saved for the future was Ironbridge Museum which had been badly hit by the pandemic.

In 2022, post the pandemic, I launched a review of the Fund’s strategy to ensure that we were still meeting the most urgent needs of UK’s heritage. I was also keen that the fund had a clear vision of how the UK would be a better place due to the distribution of some £6-7bn over the next 20 years. The new strategy has introduced four new investment principles that will guide all grant giving: Saving Heritage; Protecting the Environment; Promoting access and inclusion and supporting resilience.

Palace of Westminster

The Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster is one of the largest and most complex conservation projects in the world. In 2019 Parliament established a client Sponsor Board to act as a single focus for the project. I was appointed to that Board as a heritage expert and served on it until March 2023 when the Sponsor Board was replaced by a new Parliamentary Programme Board. In 2020 the Sponsor Board established a Delivery Authority that has the task of developing and delivering the project to the scope, budget and timescale set down by Parliament. It was set up as a company limited by guarantee. I was also appointed a non-executive director of the Delivery Authority. This Board now answers to the Programme Board. In April 2025 I was appointed, by the Client Board, Chair of the Delivery Authority.

Gresham College

In 2020-22 I was Provost of Gresham College. The College, based at Barnard’s Inn in the City of London, is named after Sir Thomas Gresham who conceived the idea of building an commercial Exchange modelled on the Antwerp Bourse. Sir Thomas left the rents of the Royal Exchange as a legacy to found a college to give public lectures freely available to all. The college opened its doors in 1597 in his fine mansion in Bishopsgate, it was there that the Professors gave their lectures until 1768.

The original Professorships were mathematics, astronomy, divinity, music, law, medicine and rhetoric. In addition, the three new, sponsored, professorships of business, IT and environment have helped to widen and modernise the programme.

Today the college gives some 130 lectures a year from some of the most brilliant minds in the world of academia. Over the last five years nearly 90,000 people have attended these in person and 19 million have watched them online. As Provost I chaired the Academic Board of Professors who guide the college’s programme.

I was also a visiting professor at the college between 2009 and 2022 and you can see my past lectures here.

Architrave Historical Services Ltd

In 2015 I established Architrave as a vehicle for providing advice to owners of major historic buildings, since then, working closely with a project manager and a curator we have advised on two dozen projects. This link takes you to Architrave’s website for a client list and more.

English Heritage

For thirteen years I was the Chief Executive of English Heritage the body that the government set up to advise on England’s historic environment. English Heritage was the institutional descendant of the Ancient Monuments Department of the Office of Works set up in 1912. My time at EH was devoted to finding ways of making heritage protection fairer and more effective; and making sure that our wonderful heritage plays a positive role in improving the quality of people’s lives. As protecting heritage is a technical process, in fact part of England’s planning system, I spent a lot of time working on improving heritage protection law, government planning guidance and working on training projects with central and local government. I know this sounds unglamorous, but it is essential if English society is to effectively identify what is important and protect it for future generations.

Underpinning my work at EH was a fierce determination to develop its intellectual and professional expertise. English Heritage was an expert organisation relying entirely on the knowledge and experience of its staff. As a consequence I was really keen on developing a research strategy and conservation principles; the development of new research techniques; the publication of ground-breaking research; major research excavations and collaborative research projects in a wide range of disciplines.

English Heritage also managed the English part of the National Heritage Collection of ancient monuments and historic buildings. These are over 420 sites, 43 of which are registered museums,  that belong to the government ranging from Stonehenge to Dover Castle. I set out to achieve three things with these: to make sure that every one of them has modern, clear and engaging interpretation, is presented appropriately and has suitable visitor facilities; to make sure that they are in good condition and that we know how much is needed to keep them in good condition; and to eliminate the financial operating deficit for opening the sites to the public.

During the late noughties great progress was been made on two of these ambitions: the operating deficit was down to £2m from over £8m a year; membership numbers were up from 300,00 to one million; more than 160 sites were redisplayed with new interpretation and exhibitions. But the maintenance deficit was growing because of the appalling financial settlements the organisation got from government. In 2014 the deficit was at around £60m.

I was also very keen that everything we did was based on solid intelligence. And this led to a series of initiatives:

The first was Heritage Counts, the annual state of the historic environment report – still going strong. This is a compendium of heritage data gathered so that we can begin to discern trends and argue for the nation’s heritage from an empirical base.

The second was the gradual development of Heritage at Risk which started as a list of buildings at risk in London and moved to a comprehensive list of all designated heritage at risk across the country.

The third and most recent was the creation of the National Heritage Protection Plan. This is a plan that identifies what the most important heritage is, what the threats are to it and what mitigations are likely to be effective.

We also saved a number of major historic sites: Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury, the world’s first Iron framed building; Apethorpe Hall, a very important seventeenth century country house at risk and the Birmingham manufactory J.W. Evans a unique Victorian factory containing a complete archive.

Museum of London

Before April 2002 I ran the Museum of London, the world’s largest city museum. There a dynamic exhibition and gallery refurbishment programme increased visitors to nearly 400,000 a year. The museum’s 300-strong archaeological unit made major archaeological discoveries. In February 2002 we opened a new archaeological research centre in Hackney – the London Archaeological Archive and Research centre LAARC and in 2003 an £11 million new extension and entrance.

Historic Royal Palaces

In 1989 I was appointed Curator of Historic Royal Palaces with responsibility for the presentation, archaeology, building conservation and maintenance and display of the six unoccupied royal palaces. In the 8 years I held the post I was responsible for a number of major restoration projects, including the completion of the fire damage at Hampton Court, the restoration of the King’s Privy Garden there and the building of the new Jewel House for the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

Trusteeships and Boards

Over the years I have been involved with a large number of organisations as a trustee, committee member or as an associate. I am an active member of a number of scholarly organisations and have become involved with a number of others through my work. I have been elected to three professional bodies:

  • Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
  • Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
  • Member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists

I have also held (or still hold) a number of visiting professorships and fellowships:

  • Professorial Research Fellow of the University of Buckingham, Faculty of Business, Humanities and Social Sciences, from 2024
  • Visiting Professor of the Built Environment at Gresham College from 2009-2022
  • Visiting Professor of Medieval London History at Royal Holloway College, 1999-2002
  • Leverhulme Research Fellow 2003
  • Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, from  2014-2024

I am a member of specialist and period societies, but I have had a particularly close involvement with the following:

  • Co-founder and committee member of the Society for Court Studies since 1995; President 2006-12; Honorary Vice-President and committee member since 2012 (see also: Court Studies on this site)
  • President of the London and Middlesex Archaeology Society 2004-7
  • Chairman of the City of London Archaeological Society 1998-2002; Patron since 2002
  • Vice President of National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies 1998-2008
  • President of the Huntingdonshire Local History Society from 2004 to 2019
  • Patron of the London Parks and Gardens Trust since 2004
  • President of the London Appreciation Society since 2018

In relation to my scholarly activities, I have been fortunate to have been given various honours in recognition of my work in architectural history and heritage:

  • Honorary Doctorate from the City University in 2002
  • Honorary Fellowship at Royal Holloway College in 2003
  • Honorary Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects since 2003
  • Honorary member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors since 2008.
  • Honorary Doctorate from University of Bath in 2010
  • Commander of the British Empire in 2011
  • Honorary Doctorate from the University of East Anglia 2022

During my career have been active in many organisations connected to my professional work including:

  • Trustee of the Dickens House Museum 1998 to 2008
  • Council Member for St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1999 to 2015
  • Chairman of the European Heritage Heads Forum, 2006 to 2012
  • Trustee of the Canal and River Trust from 2010 to 2015
  • Trustee of the English Heritage Foundation in 2010 to 2015
  • Trustee and director of the British Library 2015-2023 and member of Capital projects committee 2020-present
  • Member of the Sponsor Board Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster 2018-23
  • Director of the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority 2020-25, Chairman 2025-present
  • Trustee of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation from 2015, chairman since 2021