Heritage Now #10

IN CONVERSATION

TOP: St John’s Hospital, Lichfield, east range late 15th century from Staffordshire by Christopher Wakeling and Nikolaus Pevsner

(2024). (Martine Hamilton Knight)

BELOW: Ballanorris, Ballabeg, Isle of Man. Jonathan Kewley’s Isle of Man was published by Yale University Press in 2023. (Colin Russell)

Pevsner Architectural Guides will undoubt edly continue to need updating and revised in light of new research and new building. What is the next stage of their evolution? There’s no realistic scope for a fresh cycle of revised volumes, unfortunately, though we do mean to continue the tradition of correcting any slips when each volume has its first reprint. In the longer term, the obvious next step is to provide a digital version of the gazetteer entries for England, Scotland and Wales, in a form that would also allow further corrections and addi tions to be made. Plans are still at an early stage but we think that an online subscription service that could be satellite-linked for ease of use has strong potential and appeal. This would be com plementary to the printed books, as their intro ductions, illustrations and other features would not make an easy fit with a web-based digital

version. Likewise, new volumes in the Buildings of Ireland series will continue to appear, to complete the coverage of the four nations. What is next for Simon Bradley? Charles O’Brien and I are still retained by Yale as the joint editors of the Pevsner guides and, though this no longer constitutes a full-time post for either of us, we’re still involved with decisions and discussions about the future of the series. Aside from that, I’ve just completed a survey of British railway history for Profile Books, entitled Bradley’s Railway Guide: a journey through two centuries of British Railway His tory, 1825–2025 , for publication in October. After which, I’ll be writing a biography of Waterloo station: a return to architectural themes and to central London, where my writing for the Pevsner series started.

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HERITAGE NOW (03/2024) WINTER 2024