Episode 17: Lutyens and Wren

St. Paul’s Cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren

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, 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. This provides the podcast with an opportunity to examine Britain’s commercial centre as it evolved between the Wars. Nearly every major financial institution was being rebuilt in the 1920s, not least the Bank of England itself. Structures such as the Midland Bank head office were begun in a spirit of optimism, as Britain found its feet again and needed finance to recover from the effects of war. They were often completed in a different era, when the Depression had set in and rooms that were intended to entertain the captains of industry were instead used to put together rescue packages to stop them from going broke.

Clive and John also discuss Lutyens’s relationship with the Midland’s Chairman, Reginald McKenna, who had married Gertrude Jekyll’s niece Pamela, and their shared admiration for Sir Christopher Wren. At the end of the show, they parry questions from the audience who has joined them on one of the hottest days of the year.