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 short years, it has now been restored and John has been to see – and celebrate – the result.  

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 visitors to London from overseas, the chance to get up close to one of the founding documents of England’s story. One of the foremost medievalists in the country, John is in a prime position to lead the discussion with Clive on this unparallelled work of art.

The survival of the so-called tapestry – really a piece of embroidery – is itself remarkable. Only one section of this ancient textile has disappeared; the rest of the 224ft composition remains almost incredibly intact. Where was it made? Who stitched it? Who composed the design? These questions cannot be answered with certainty. There is a likely candidate, though, for the patron who commissioned it. This was William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who was also Earl of Kent; he may have ordered it for the consecration of his cathedral in Bayeux.

If the origins of the Bayeux Tapestry are obscure, the story-telling is not. John and Clive delight in the vivid and economical narrative, as well as the information it coincidentally displays about palaces, boats, horses, feasting and Norman armour. Although celebrated in its time, the tapestry was largely forgotten until ‘rediscovered’ by an 18th-century monk. Later, Hitler regarded the Bayeux Tapestry as an object he was anxious to display in Berlin but luckily the liberation of Paris occurred before he was able to take it out of the country.

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 servant turned newspaper editor who commanded a Red Cross dressing station during the First World War and was therefore saw the horror at first hand. Ware realised that the hundreds of thousands of young men who died for Britain deserved proper burial and commemoration. The losses were on a scale unknown in previous wars, and the monuments and cemeteries built to remember them were also completely without precedent. The British government rose to the challenge, finding a solution that was supremely well-adapted to the character of the nation. The result was one of the greatest commissions of public art ever seen.

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 dedication of the altars at Salisbury’s east end in 1225. 

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. Clive and John celebrate this extraordinary achievement, which sprang from the brain of the no less extraordinary John Nash.

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 past centuries – such as the journalist and contrarian William Cobbett – did not take anything like such a favourable view.  The change came with the Arts and Crafts Movement, many of whose leading lights loved the round-shouldered hills, villages of honey-coloured stone and old-fashioned rural ways.

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, grandson of the Thomas Cook who founded the travel business. The latter, born in 1808, had been a Baptist evangelist and temperance campaigner. His epoch-making first excursion took place in 1841, when a special train took 570 people from Leicester to attend a Temperance meeting in Loughborough.

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 degrees C.  Their bathing complex came to include a huge, vaulted structure, which collapsed at some point after the legions left Britannia.   It became so derelict that the source of the spring was lost and only discovered again in the 1870s.

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 place in the presence of other people.  This was as much the case for the social elite as it was for ordinary families.  As court records of divorce cases in the 18th century reveal, very little happened that was not known to servants.  Privacy, as we understand it today, would have been a rare luxury at almost any period before the Second World War.   

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 case in the 17th century.  Clive and John discuss why this should have been—what caused the fires, what the consequences were for the places concerned and how they were rebuilt.

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 villages, settled, many centuries ago, by Saxons from Germany. 

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’ club, which occupies the former head office of the Midland Bank in the City of London.

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.

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. Her body was then carried back to London for burial, and at every place that the cortège stopped a beautiful cross was erected. 

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 princesses,’ ran a popular song.

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 great medieval estate.  Its chatelaine Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, is remembered by one of the most beautiful tombs in the country.

The National Gallery, now 200 years old, occupies one of the most famous buildings in London, on the north side of Trafalgar Square.  This Greek Revival masterpiece by William Wilkins was designed to take account of the view of St Martin in the Fields from Pall Mall—so unusually it was conceived as having been seen from the side.  Clive and John discuss both Wilkins’s design and the Sainsbury Wing, added by Venturi, Scott Brown in the 1980s.

In this episode, Clive and John discuss the holiday village of Portmeirion, an improbable, festive vision of the Mediterranean built on a wooded peninsula of Snowdonia, whose centenary falls this year.

Castle Howard in Yorkshire is one of a select group of country houses which must be seen as complete works of art.  Visitors to the great domed palace, set in the gentle landscape of the Howardian Hills north-east of York, may be bowled over by the panache of the architecture, or the beauty of the woods; by the dazzling quality of the pictures and furniture, or the charm of the porcelain.