This is the time of year when thoughts turn to mince pies, Christmas shopping, mulled wine – and chimneys, whether it is to settle around a roaring hearth or hope that Father Christmas pays a visit.  So John and Clive are turning their att...

In today's episode of Your Places or Mine, John is joined by the inimitable Charles Saumarez Smith who divulges all he knows about the architect Sir John Vanbrugh in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of his death. Discover the remarkable li...

The founding of the Georgian Group in 1937 was a milestone in the movement to save beautiful architecture.  With an anniversary around the corner, Clive and John discuss how the Group emerged from the parent organisation, the Society for t...

Last week’s Your Places of Mine celebrated the rebuilding of the House of Commons after the original interior was bombed during one of the last raids of the Blitz. This week, Clive and John consider the Palace of Westminster, otherwise known as...

On May 10, 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the seat of British democracy, the chamber of the House of Commons.  This was not the first time fire had struck the Palace of Westminster: most of it had already been rebuilt after a disastrou...

This week John and Clive are bowled over by Albi Cathedral, a towering, outwardly austere edifice of rosy brick which is ‘quite unlike any other medieval structure that you will see – a work of abstract modernism made in the 13th century’. ...

Phipps, Carnegie and Old Westbury GardensIn its turn of the 20th-century heyday, Long Island could boast no fewer than 900 country houses.  Since then, most have disappeared, leaving Old Westbury Gardens in a unique position ...

Clive has just been to an event at Hatfield House, the palace to the North of London which stands as a monument to the political gene of the Cecil family.  John is more than equal to discussing this great country house and its tre...

In 2019 a devastating fire consumed the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, one of the towering symbols of French identity, and it seemed that one of the greatest cultural monuments in Europe had, literally, gone up in smoke. But after only two s...

An extraordinary cultural loan is about to take place: soon, while its home in France is being improved, the Bayeux Tapestry will be displayed in the British Museum for two years.  This will give members of the British public, along with v...

In advance of Remembrance Sunday on November 11, Clive has been visiting the Commonwealth War Graves in France.  The Imperial War Graves Commission, as it was called when established in 1917, was the brain child of Fabian Ware, a civil ser...

Which cathedral is closest to the English heart?  Impossible to say but it may be Salisbury, the subject of this week’s Your Places or Mine.  On September 28 a special service will be held to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the ded...

The creation of Regent Street under the Prince Regent is a rare instance of a master plan that reshaped London. It linked North and South, starting in the new Regent’s Park and ending at the Prince’s Carlton House on the edge of St James’s Park...

Today, the Cotswolds are famous around the world, as can be seen from the number of celebrities making their homes here.  They are a brand which commands instant recognition.  This, however, is a recent phenomenon, and visitors from p...

Sennowe Park in North Norfolk is one of the most ebullient country houses built during the swaggering Edwardian decade at the beginning of the 20th century.  It reflects the personality of the man for whom it was built, Thomas Cook, grands...

The Romans arrived at Bath in AD43, calling it Sulis Minerva – a combination of the goddess Minerva with the local deity of Sulis.  They loved the hot springs, practically the only ones in the country, which gush from the ground at 40 degr...

These days, privacy is high on the agenda.  There are huge concerns over data, images, digital identity and personal space, all of which should be kept private.  But how was this possible in previous ages when almost all of life took ...

Everyone has heard about the Great Fire of London – but what about the Great Fire of Northampton…or Marlborough…or Blandford Forum?  Fire has frequently wrought destruction on towns, cities and country houses, and this was particularly the...

The then Prince of Wales first came to Transylvania in the late 1990s on an official visit.  It’s the only time he’s come on business.  He fell so much under the spell of the place that he bought a house here, in one of the wooden vil...

For the first time in the history of this podcast, Your Places or Mine has gone on location.  John and Clive have been invited to The Ned's Club, the amazing complex of hospitality venues, including restaurants, hotel and private members’ ...

 Windsor Castle has been imbued with symbolism since William the Conqueror founded it after the invasion of 1066. He took the name of Windsor from an existing Anglo-Saxon palace which stood on a different spot.  On a bluff overlooking...

This week YPOMPOD is joined by Alice Loxton — History Alice to her many followers — to discuss the extraordinary series of crosses that King Edward I built in memory of his queen, Eleanor of Castile in the 1290s. Eleanor died in Lincolnshire. H...

The American girl was a phenomenon, charming, sporty, better educated than her European counterpart. talk on a wide range of subjects.  Around sixty American girls became peeresses at the turn of the 20th century.  ‘We are the dollar ...

In this summer episode of ypompod, we got to the seaside – to Ramsgate, beloved of Queen Victoria and now home to the biggest Wetherspoon’s (in an elegant neo-Greek building called the Royal Pavilion of 1913) on the face of the planet.  

Where is Ewelme Palace?  It was one of the most splendid houses in the country when it was built in the 15th century but nothing of it now remains.  There are, however, some of the ancillary buildings and monuments that went with a gr...