Episode 34: Journalists and Gentlemen: How the Georgian Group Saved London

The founding of the Georgian Group in 1937 was a milestone in the movement to save beautiful architecture.  With an anniversary around the corner, Clive and John discuss how the Group emerged from the parent organisation, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and why it was needed.  They reveal the extraordinary extent to the destruction inflicted on Georgian London after the First World War.  Not even town palaces, Georgian square or the works of the Adam Brothers, notably the Adelphi, were spared.

Douglas Goldring, a founding member of The Georgian Society

Whereas SPAB’s interests were principally medieval and rural, the Georgian Group’s were metropolitan and post-1714.  It required a heroic effort to get it going.   The idea originated with the much put upon journalist Douglas Goldring, before catching the imagination of various grandees, including Lord Derwent; Robert Byron served as a brilliant propagandist.  Clive shares some of his own experience as the Founding Hon.Secretary of the Twentieth Century Society (the called the Thirties Society) to illuminate some of the issues.  The Georgian Group was a media success – but demolition on a scale previously unimagined came, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, during the Blitz.  With new challenges after the Second World War.  

John Betjeman, an early supporter of The Georgian Group