60 C O N T E X T 1 3 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 4 throughout and many including incidental human interest: a glimpse of afternoons and evenings passed not productively but pleasantly. This is a book to be enjoyed – responsibly of course – while you can: a catalogue of heroic little islands of resistance against the brand and the bland. Michael Taylor practices independently as Michael Taylor Conservation and Planning Chicken and egg Literature and Architecture in Early Modern England Anne M Myers, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 253pp, hardback, black and white illustrations, ISBN 978 1 4214 0722 7, £28.50 Which come first to the growing mind: is it fairy tales, poems, songs and nursery rhymes, or are they the houses, places of worship and gardens that provide the usual locations and setting of infancy, childhood and adolescence? The link between the written, sung or spoken word and architecture is strong. It is no easier to solve this riddle than to separate the chicken from the egg. Then comes architectural writing as reportage: journeys through time and to new places give rise to a huge amount of what is written about buildings and cities. Anne Myers delves into these questions in a publication that appears to have grown out of scholarly interests based around Shakespeare and his times that are shared within other departments of English in the USA and Canada. Her close contemporary is Andrew Griffin. Both divide their research more or less equally between literary texts and actual buildings or cities in England and nearby countries. Geoffrey Fletcher (1923–2004) provided many of my generation with the initial inspiration to explore the older parts of London, or the parts of it that had survived into the second half of the 20th century. His articles in the Daily Telegraph and his many short but beautifully self-illustrated books were classics of their time. They led on to other writers about church architecture, such as Basil Clarke. The works of Shakespeare and Marlowe soon led me to a careful study of the pages of John Stow. His Survey of London first came out in 1598 (one year before the first Globe Theatre opened and Julius Caesar was performed). Stow is, in my view, nothing less than a patron saint of the IHBC. He almost became a martyr when his house was searched for ‘the many dangerous and superstitious books in his possession’. In January Cathedral Communications released the 21st annual edition of The Building Conservation Directory for 2014. A copy was sent to each IHBC member who has asked to receive relevant promotional mailings. The 2014 directory offers a wealth of information for the historic built environment professional, including technical articles, extensive listings of specialist contractors and suppliers, relevant courses and events, and sources of further information. The directory is supported by Cathedral’s website www.buildingconservation.com, which certainly merits a visit and should probably find its way on to your Google favourites list. Members who have asked not to receive promotional material but would like to receive future Cathedral Communications publications on the historic built environment should email Carmen Moran at membershipservices@ihbc.org.uk to change their mailing preference on the IHBC membership database. Rather than a mere topographical interest (such as my own), Myers takes these themes far deeper into writings in English, French and Italian. The conclusion is that a literary interest in buildings, monuments and cities is inseparable from the study of the sites themselves. The consequent urge to preserve these sites, whether de facto or by means of antiquarian records (such as Stow’s), has provided the intellectual basis for the whole conservation discipline. The book’s last section is a thorough account of the 1993 Consistory Court case about the rebuilding of Saint Helen’s Bishopgate. The church had been severely damaged by an IRA bomb. An argument for modernisation was pitched against antiquarian preferences for a like-forlike reconstruction. The modernisers’ success provided a test-case verdict. The wholesale rebuilding on modernised lines of another City church, Saint Mary-at Hill, after a severe fire in 1988 is overlooked by Myers. Up until these watersheds, antiquarian rebuilds had often been the rule, as at the war damaged Saint Olave’s, Hart Street. The concluding bibliography and index will serve as useful guides into this field for the newcomer. Otherwise, Literature and Architecture is likely to be at most background reading for the practitioner of day-to-day conservation. Those with a close interest in literature, however, will find it revealing. Looking forward, we can expect exhibitions, illustrated books and even audio-visual presentations to follow when these scholarly pages are transformed into more popular and consumable forms. Graham Tite, conservation officer, BEAMS, Hertford
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