As far as making sure that old windows are doing their job and keeping you warm, because there’s a real, real risk at the moment — with the completely correct focus on insulation in buildings — that all our beautiful old sash windows, with their wonderful handmade glass, get put in skips, and UPVC windows get put in instead. KEAY: Well, yes, you could do that. You could do that, but I’m not sure where it gets you, really. Then you start saying, “Well, what about all the other things?” Do you go for a massive repatriation? You’d empty a lot of museums, and I’m not sure you’d solve a lot of problems, really. It’s been there for a long time.

He adds, “There will be about 2,000 guests instead of the 8,000 there were at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. I don’t think hereditary peers will be there, but I’m sure there will be a representative group of peers and they will probably wear parliamentary robes. Read More Related Articles Charles II’s immediate successors were both crowned with the St Edward’s Crown - James II in 1685 and William III in 1689. But as royal tastes and fashions changed, it was not worn again in coronations for more than 200 years. KEAY: Well, what I would say is that you must never underestimate just how much our ancestors cared about keeping warm. You think we care about it, and the cost of warming our houses, but if you had to chop every log that warmed your sitting room, you’d pretty much be focused on it, too. The key objects that will be used during the course of the ceremony are those made in 1661 for King Charles II’s Coronation – St Edward’s Crown, the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross, and the Sovereign’s Orb – as well as the 12th century Coronation Spoon andThe shadow of a king?: the exile of Charles II of Great Britain’, in Torsten Riotte, ed., Monarchy in Exile. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 COWEN: How much of that was sincere belief, and how much was that simply an arbitrary marker that different interest groups struggling for power fixed upon, and actually, the Civil War is about the interest groups struggling for power? Robert Boyle had been brought up — he was the son of an Irish nobleman — in great comfort and grandeur in Ireland. Silver spoon in his mouth and silks to wear. William Petty had been born the son of a very poor clothier in a town on the southeast coast of England. They met both in Oxford and in Ireland in the mid-17th century. This is an exceptional book about an exceptional time: that one decade in its history when Britain was a kingless state. In a series of meticulously researched and deftly drawn character studies – of idealistic proto-communists, pistol-wielding countesses, zany visionaries, journalistic rakes, through to Protector Cromwell himself – Anna Keay brilliantly conveys what it was like to live amid the contrasts and contradictions, the heady optimism and the bleak despair, of that tumultuous age. The Restless Republic is a triumph. It is hard to imagine a better introduction to the volatile world of the 1650s’

COWEN: Do you grade your renters the way, say, Airbnb does? Or anyone can come in and stay in the castle?But so much of the work that is done through that program is amazing. Grassroots work, for example, in the town I live in, King’s Lynn — the local Fisher Folk Museum, which documents the lives of the fishing people of that town through generations: their livelihoods, their communities, their way of life. That wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the Lottery Heritage Fund. That seems, to me, to be a wonderful thing and something that we should be really proud of.

born August 1974 [5] [6] [2] in the West Highlands of Scotland), [1] is a British architectural historian, author and television personality and director of The Landmark Trust since 2012. Whereas, if you go — equally interesting, but just very different — somewhere like Manchester, which is amazing — world’s first industrial city, had this extraordinary explosion in the 19th century. The railways were invented there. Everything was developing in a very different direction. But it happens to have come to pass that, actually, that seems to be quite a satisfying separation. There’s something about the apolitical nature of the monarchy, and how incredibly careful they have to be about that in a world where everything seems to endlessly be in turmoil in terms of electoral politics and so on, to have a certain sense of reassurance about it. She appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity in October 2014. Her hypothetical donation to this fictional museum was the St Edward's Crown, part of the British Crown Jewels. [10] She co-presented The Buildings That Made Britain on Channel 5. [8]KEAY: I’m trying to save an amazing building outside Edinburgh, a house called Mavisbank, which was built in the 1720s for a man who was one of our great renaissance figures, the great pioneer of the Scottish Enlightenment. It’s the most beautiful, beautiful house. It’s derelict, just walls standing, but the ceilings and the roofs have fallen in, and it’s clinging onto life by its fingernails. My great hope for what I’m doing next is being able to raise the money to save it from collapse. COWEN: Which are the old buildings that we have too many of in Britain? There’s a lot of Christopher Wren churches. I think there’s over 20.